BioEYES Newsletter December, 2012
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Hello BioEYES Supporter, We hope you've been enjoying the holidays! The first half of our school year has been going wonderfully so far, and we've just received some excellent news for the upcoming year. If you remember from our September newsletter, we shared some bad news regarding our Baltimore County, MD, and South Bend, IN, branches. Well, things have turned around for both! Karena Curtis, our Baltimore County educator, had to take a medical leave of absence for the fall semester, leaving their school system without our program all season. Karena, though, has just received a clean bill of health and will be returning to teach BioEYES as of the first of the year! Congratulations, Karena, and welcome back!
What's New? Baltimore (Valerie Butler, Chandra Harvey, and Rob Vary) BioEYES Baltimore is proud to share that our parent institution, The Carnegie Institution for Science, has just been given Charity Navigator's highest rating - four stars - for sound fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency for the twelfth year in a row. Carnegie is one of only five organizations out of 5,500 evaluated by Charity Navigator to earn the four-star rating for this long, and the only one in Washington, D.C. to do so. Read more about it here, and see the Charity Navigator detail here! South Bend, IN (Anita Beebe and Jill Voreis) Here at Notre Dame, BioEYES has much to celebrate. The program has received some supplemental funding for this spring semester, and it appears that we may have more for the following school year -- yeah!!! It is such a wonderful program, and we have heard lots of "thanks" from the teachers that will (again) be partnering with us. We are excited to add Dr. Jill Voreis to the BioEYES team! Many of our teachers had the opportunity to work with Jill back in 2007 and 2008 when she and James Whitcome helped begin the program
A fifth-grade students examines his fish to note if there have been changes since the previous day.
Our friends at Notre Dame University in Indiana had much more surprising news for us. Despite losing funding and having to close up shop for the fall, they didn't give up. Thanks to the tireless grant-application efforts of Tom Loughran, they have managed to secure the funding necessary to bring them back for the spring semester! They have a new BioEYES educator in charge: Jill Voreis, who recently graduated from Notre Dame University with a doctorate in biochemistry. Welcome aboard, Jill! We all look forward to working with you. While Baltimore County and South Bend students and teachers have been anxiously awaiting the return of BioEYES, our Baltimore City and Philadelphia schools were lucky enough to have their programs going strong. Here's what some of the participating teachers have had to say about the Philly program: "One parent was amazed at the depth of knowledge their child was able to gain. Today we went on a field trip and one of my students was accurately talking about genotype and phenotype. I found all of my students were fascinated with the speed of growth of development. They were in awe of seeing the fully developed larve and the blood flowing through it's body!" -Charlene Jablow, middle school teacher "I have done the BioEYES project with my 7th graders for the past several years. There are always two moments in the week that bring super excitement. When the embryos are about 2 days old the students are able to see the beating heart of the
Whitcome helped begin the program here at Notre Dame. Jill has since received her doctoral degree in biochemistry from Notre Dame, and will be a fantastic addition to the program. Jill is currently employed at two local universities teaching Introductory Organic and Biochemistry as well as instructing a biology lab. She is looking forward to once again working with the BioEYES program. Philadelphia (Jamie Shuda and Tracy Nelson) Bioeyes Philadelphia just moved to a beautiful new, modern building. We moved from the Biomedical Research Building to the Smilow Translational Research Center across from CHOP (the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia). In this new space we will have our own lab bench designated for high schoolers to use while they intern or as they prepare for their science fair projects in the spring. In January we are planning to have a well attended new teacher orientation. Seventeen educators are on our invite list! Melbourne, Australia (Michael Spiegel) Having the largest zebrafish facility in the Southern Hemisphere comes with a lot of responsibility and we have had a busy and fun year at BioEYES Australia. We are based at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute which is part of Monash University, Australia's largest university. Since our start at the end of 2010, we have reached about 2,000 primary and secondary students what in the US is called grade school and high school respectively. Since we don't have a dedicated outreach educator this has been quite an effort and the brunt of that work has been done by Dr. Sharon Flecknoe who works at Monash University. Without Sharon we would have been dead in the water. Not only has she been out in the classrooms, but she has started training volunteer students, who are studying for their PhDs, to deliver BioEYES in the classroom. Our first trainee has been Sivan Elishav from the medical faculty and Sivan is already running BioEYES lectures in the schools.
embryos are about 2 days old the students are able to see the beating heart of the developing baby zebrafish. I love it when they cry out 'Oh my God - I can see the heart beating!' The other moment is on last day of the week when the baby fish are hatching right in front of their eyes. The students jump out of their seats and shout 'I can see them hatching!' There is no other experience in middle school science that compares with this." -Connie Goochee, middle school teacher "My children came into school every day after your first visit asking about the zebrafish. They loved the experience and wanted to take them home. Your lessons were both informative and interesting. It was certainly an experience they will remember for a long time. Thanks again." -Marci Silverman, 4th grade teacher And while South Bend was unable to deliver BioEYES this fall, the teachers didn't forget about us. Here's what some of them shared: "I had BioEYES, and I had students tell me that they want to go into various fields of biology after that week. One student who was otherwise apathetic and withdrawn was excited and kept calling me over to show and tell me what she had under the microscope. She was actually smiling! We need more programs like this that get kids excited about real science. We have a good science program, but this was a crescendo!" -Tim Braunsdorf, 8th grade teacher "Bioeyes [sic] was one of the most exciting and exploratory experience my students have ever had. I have been in education for 30 years and this activity was one in which children honestly got to experience REAL science. It truly electrified the children as well as the parents." -Anne Toth, 4th grade teacher "BioEYES was always the BEST thing we did all year! Hands-on is the best hands down!" -Jeff Meinhard, 6th grade teacher While we are all thrilled to have such good news for the upcoming spring semester, it is important to realize just how close a call our Baltimore County, MD, and South Bend, IN, programs had. Our program, which primarily delivers science education to underserved urban students, is largely funded by gifts and grants, and in times like these granters find themselves with less money to go around but more worthy causes that need it.
Baltimore City educator Chandra Harvey helps a student clean the Petri dish holding his zebrafish embryos.
You can help, though. Clicking on the "Donate" button to the left or following this link will bring you to the donation page on our website, where you can make a tax-deductible donation to BioEYES through PayPal, or learn where you can mail a check. If you or someone you know has received BioEYES in the classroom, or if you simply would like to support bringing exciting, hands-on STEM programs to underprivileged students, please consider making a donation today. Every little bit helps. Thank you for your support of BioEYES.
We have received $9,204 from Access Monash which supports us to reach low socio-economic schools in Monash' catchment zone, places with names like Dandenong and Keysborough which are areas around
Sincerely,
Dr. Steven Farber
Dr. Jamie Shuda
Keysborough which are areas around Melbourne. The Australian federal government (The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education) has contributed another $22,000, for a total of $31,204. We had matching funding available from the Schools Connect Foundation, which takes the yearly total to $62,408. This was about half of our short-term goal, but we are continuing efforts throughout next year.
Dr. Steven Farber BioEYES co-founder and staff scientist Carnegie Institution for Science
Dr. Jamie Shuda BioEYES co-founder and Director of Life Science Outreach University of Pennsylvania
BioEYES currently operates out of the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Johns Hopkins School of Education in Baltimore, MD; the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA; and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. We have been able to deliver our programs to tens of thousands of children at no cost to their schools because of the generosity of individuals, foundations and corporations. For more information or to make a donation, please visit www.bioeyes.org. We thank you for your support!
Our medium term target is to ultimately fundraise approximately $320,000 which would allow us to recruit the appropriate staff and expand the program to reach 200-240 new classes and about 10,00012,000 new students. We wish you all a safe and healthy holiday and new year from a very warm Melbourne Australia, where santa wears boardies and a singlet and drives a Ute pulled by kangaroos.
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