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(supported by an NIH Science Education Partnership Award)

Audience: Teachers (grade 3-8 in summer program and K-12 in academic year) Students (grade 3-8 primarily) and adult public (in public dissemination aspects of the project)

Subjects Addressed: Microbiology, virology, immunology, light and electron microscopy

Project Description: The unseen world, both living and non-living, at the micro-scale and the nano-scale has inordinate importance for health and disease and is only made visible in detail through the appropriate tools of microscopy.

In this project University of Southern Maine (USM) faculty and staff with expertise in electron microscopy, microbiology, virology, and immunology team up with elementary and middle school education and outreach specialists and the staff of USM’s Southworth Planetarium to reveal vast but usually invisible micro-space/nano-space worlds to students through curriculum development work with grades 3-8 teachers in the summer and K-12 teachers during the academic year.

Grades 3-8 teachers participating in the summer program return to their classrooms with new light microscopy and curriculum resources and are provided with outreach support in their use of these resources. Resources generated also contribute to new mico- and nano-space planetarium shows that will reach many audiences.

Phase I of the project (years 1 to 3) will emphasize collaboration of biomedical sciences faculty and staff, teacher participants, and the staff of USM’s Southworth Planetarium on curriculum materials and production of visual resources for far-reaching educational outreach.

Phase II of the project will focus on dissemination of curricula and other products of the project while expanding outreach efforts throughout Maine and integrating the academic year programs for K-12 teachers into the academic offerings of the Department of Applied Medical Sciences.

Specific goals of the project are: 1) to reveal directly (with minimal abstraction) to K-12 teachers, their students, and the general public the biological entities and molecular processes at micro- and nano-scales that dramatically impact human health.

2) To support, through new summer and academic year programs, collaborative partnership of teachers and university scientists in developing grade level appropriate standards based curriculum units that will illuminate the impact of the micro- and nano-scale realms on human health.

3) To extend collaborative efforts to include development of Micro-space/Nano-space Planetarium shows to be produced and piloted at the USM Southworth Planetarium and then distributed to planetariums nationally.

4) To sustain the partnership and disseminate regionally and nationally the curriculum materials collaboratively developed during the partnership through publications, a project website, professional presentations, contributions to digital library resources, and active classroom outreach by USM science education outreach staff and programs.

February 10, 2009 21:55 UTC