Science & Technology

Peabody developing curricula to engage nation's youths in science

The Yale Peabody Museum is developing curricula on insect-transmitted diseases for use across the nation with a $1.3 million Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) presented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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The Yale Peabody Museum is developing curricula on insect-transmitted diseases for use across the nation with a $1.3 million Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) presented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The SEPA program aims to immerse students in science, increase science literacy and encourage biomedical research careers, especially among underserved and underrepresented populations. The NIH is providing support for the Peabody’s five-year project through its National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).

The Yale initiative — led by Leonard Munstermann, senior research scientist in the Yale School of Public Health — will develop science curricula for middle and high school students. The central theme of the curricula will be disease transmission and how it is affected by climate variation. Special attention will be given to those infectious diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks and sand flies.

“The school curricula will feature increasingly emergent infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis, Lyme disease and West Nile virus. These diseases not only have critical public health significance, but also are excellent models for pointing to broader biological relationships,” said Munstermann, who is also the curator of entomology at the Peabody. “Yale University is a major research center for these diseases and will provide scientific authority for the curriculum content.”

The project will be centered in the Education Department of the Yale Peabody Museum and coordinated by project manager Laura Fawcett and curriculum specialist Beth Biegler Hines. The scientific component will draw on the relevant expertise from researchers at Yale’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health and its Center for Earth Observation.

In Phase I, Yale investigators, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station researchers, and Peabody Museum educators will work with a select group of eight science teachers from several urban public school districts to design curricula based on their joint resources. The products will include inquiry-based lesson plans, a teacher resource manual and student science kits. Researchers and museum educators will organize demonstrations of the laboratory components of the curricula as well as provide relevant specimens for classroom use by teachers and students.

In Phase II, these curriculum resources will be distributed regionally and nationally. The new teaching units are expected to impact 18,000 students by 2016.

Yale faculty participating in the project include Diane McMahon-Pratt and Peter Krause of the School of Public Health; Richard Bucala and Choukri Benmamoun of the Department of Internal Medicine; Robert Sherwin of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation; Peter Peduzzi of the Yale Center for Analytical Studies; Paul Turner of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; and Ron Smith of the Yale Center for Earth Observation. Other project participants include Theodore Andreadis and Kirby Stafford at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

SEPA programs serve K-12 students and teachers, as well as science centers and museums across the country. Many of the programs target underserved and underrepresented populations that are less likely to pursue science careers. “Students gain skills and engage their imaginations as they puzzle through the mysteries of disease, learn about their bodies, and perhaps set a course for their future careers,” said Barbara M. Alving, director of NCRR. In addition, SEPA partnerships develop projects that educate the general public about health and clinical research, with the aim of helping people make better lifestyle choices and health decisions as new medical advances emerge.