Building on the success of last year’s Teacher Professional Development Course, HSCI again offered a summer course designed for high school teachers who want to learn about stem cell science and approaches for developing effective curricula in this area. The week-long program covered a broad range of topics, from the current state of stem cell research to the ethical and legal implications of the science, and included visits to HSCI laboratories and facilities.
This year, M. William Lensch, Ph.D., HSCI Affiliated Faculty member and Instructor at Children’s Hospital Boston, led the course. Each day was a composite of interactive, literature-oriented lectures, guest seminars by subject matter experts from HSCI, and lab tours to facilities at Harvard University and Longwood Medical Area. HSCI also provided classroom materials, including educational DVDs, slide-sets, and white papers, in order to help the teachers develop academic offerings and classroom sections on stem cell science.
Participants hailed from a variety of backgrounds including City Lab (Boston), Middlesex Community College, and public and private schools in the Boston area. Two additional participants were faculty members from a medical center in Turkey who currently hold positions at a large hospital in Oklahoma and intend to return to Turkey to develop stem cell related programs at their home institution.