Workshops and Programs

Workshops

2005 offerings for Teachers
Chesapeake Bay Aquarium in the Classroom Workshop
The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) is funding an opportunity for teachers to participate in a week long workshop that will allow them to set up a 20 gallon Chesapeake Bay fish tank in their classroom. The seminar will take place at the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute's downtown location in Baltimore. Participants will be given all the necessary equipment as well as instruction on maintenance of the tank. Two days will be set aside to collect organisms from Bay locations to live in the aquarium. The purpose is to utilize an aquarium as a hands-on instructional tool for the students and to develop curriculum associated with the Chesapeake Bay. The program will run the week of August 9th through the 13th and will allow up to 15 participants.

Teachers and students gain an understanding of:

For more information contact:

Other Workshops & Programs

The examples below represent other workshops and programs that have been offered in the past and may be offered again in the future. Check back each year to see if they will be offered again.

Microbes for Hire Workshop
The Microbes for Hire Summer Workshop sponsored by the Pfizer Foundation, Waksman Foundation, and Bell Atlantic-MD is held during the summer months in the Center of Marine Biotechnology Education Labs located in the Columbus Center. The workshop was designed to translate the applied microbial research at COMB into laboratory activities for middle and high school science teachers in Maryland. Teachers gained laboratory skills and enhanced content knowledge on topics including:

• Bioremediation and the Effectiveness of Biosurfactants
• Bioluminescence and the Application of Biosensors
• Bacterial Biofilms and Their Relationship to Biodiversity
• Microbial Screening Techniques for Identifying Bioactive Compounds
• The Science of Winogradsky Columns and Marine "Microbial" Sediment
• The Role of Bacterial Biofilms in Biological Filtration for Aquaculture

Each topic area was presented by the Maryland Sea Grant Education Specialist and a COMB scientist or graduate student to provide the essential background of the research and was followed by a "hands-on" lab that exposed teachers to new techniques, laboratory materials, and ideas for their classroom. Teachers were allowed to design experiments and test out new techniques as a means of assessment and preparation for classroom follow-up. In addition, teachers were supplied with materials that were required for successful implementation of each lab activity within their classroom for the coming school year and 2 credits from the Maryland State Department of Education.

Maryland Educators Summer Research Program/Towson University (MESRP)
This program is in partnership with Towson University and places a pre-service teacher with an in-service teacher at a research institution in Maryland. The research institutions provide a 6-8 week paid internship for the teachers and provide a unique opportunity for an intensive summer of "hands-on" training in a variety of disciplines. The model of partnering a pre-service teacher and in-service teacher was developed by COMB in 1998 and has now been adopted by the whole program. The teachers that have participated at COMB have studied the influence of bacterial biofilms on biodiversity at varying depths in the Baltimore Inner Harbor. This work has resulted in the improvement of the biofilms and biodiversity lesson in SciTech and on the web, and in 1998 the teachers involved in the project presented a well-received poster at the ASM conference in Chicago, IL.