Biology workshop for teachers helps build network with minority colleges

Biology faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences are building new relationships with teachers from colleges with high minority enrollment, to help improve undergraduate curricula at minority institutions and to attract more of their students to graduate school at UConn.

This summer, John Silander Jr., a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Linda Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, directed a workshop on biodiversity and forensic genetics for nine faculty from as far away as Arizona and Puerto Rico.

The goal was to teach the latest laboratory techniques in DNA typing, using the state-of-the-art facilities of the Center for Applied Genetics and Technology, so that the visiting faculty would be able to share new skills with students at their own colleges.

The hope was that the visitors would be favorably impressed with the faculty and facilities at UConn, and that they would recommend UConn to their students for graduate school.

"Our strategy has been to build bridges and institutional memory through a program that targets faculty, rather than students, at historically black and minority colleges and universities," said Strausbaugh, director of the Center for Applied Genetics and Technology.

"We have capitalized on the widespread interest in forensic DNA typing, and the state-of-the-art instrumentation and expertise in the Center."

In two years, the program has attracted more than 30 faculty from colleges and universities that serve mostly minority undergraduates.

"Most of them knew nothing about UConn before attending our workshop," said Strausbaugh.

From the evaluations turned in by the participants this year, the workshop appears to have been successful.

"It was superb, excellent, the best I've taken in my whole academic life," wrote a biology professor from the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamon.

"The help with bridge building and student opportunities was invaluable," wrote another visitor.

"UConn is an attractive institution," wrote a third, adding that said he would strongly recommend the biology graduate program here to his students.

The hands-on laboratory sessions, led by two graduate assistants in molecular and cell biology, Craig O'Connor and Josh Suhl, and two in ecology and evolutionary biology, Andrew Latimer and Nicholas Tippery, were the workshop's biggest draw.

"I came to improve my skills in microbiology," said Ileana Gonzalez, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Puerto Rico at Ponce, who teaches microbiology and immunology and conducts research in marine biology.