The Golden Triangle’s Biogen Idec Community Lab recently completed its first full academic year. About 900 San Diego County students attended classes there.
The Community Lab is located at Biogen Idec’s research and corporate campus just off Nobel Drive in University City.
Annie Glidden is the lab’s manager of education and community outreach.
Most recently, students participated in a hands-on DNA study in its final day of the school year on June 7. Thirty-one seventh-graders from Donna Markey’s class at Vista Academy visited and worked in the lab.
“In this study, students explored how DNA testing can be used to determine if it’s safe for a patient to take a new cancer medicine that has been shown to be toxic in people with a faulty enzyme,” Glidden said. “Hands-on activities included conducting a DNA restriction digest, gel electrophoresis and observing the DNA under a UV light to analyze their results.”
Glidden directs all aspects of the Community Lab San Diego, including program and curriculum development, school administration and teacher relations, volunteer recruitment and training and lab logistics. She has handled this responsibility since Community Lab San Diego was first envisioned in the summer of 2004.
The lab is actually a 1,300-square-foot classroom equipped with state-of-the-art science equipment. During this most recent project, the 32 students worked side by side with five biotechnology professionals from Biogen Idec to analyze DNA and determine whether a specific person can safely take a new cancer medicine based upon his or her genetic profile.
Biogen Idec’s Community Lab program originally began at Biogen Idec’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., in August 2002. The doors to Community Lab San Diego opened in July of 2005.
To decide which projects the lab will conduct, Biogen Idec collaborates closely with the San Diego County Office of Education and other science education leaders and teachers and designs its program to emphasize how principles work in the real world.
“It stimulates imagination, and students want to experience what they are learning and see its relevance to their lives,” Glidden said. “The experiences students have in Community Lab are clearly connected to what they are learning in the classroom.”
“Since Community Lab is open to seventh-grade life-science students from all around San Diego County, the science standards in seventh grade are aimed at the life sciences, it is a perfect fit for the work we do at Biogen Idec,” Glidden said. “In addition, educators consider middle school students to be at a critical point for capturing and fostering their interest in science and science-related careers.”
“Teachers apply for and participate in a paid three-day summer institute, which provides orientation and prerequisite training prior to bringing their classes to the Community Lab during the academic year,” she added. “This professional development program is designed to help teachers relate what is taught in the Community Lab back to their classroom teaching, to truly enrich that learning experience.”
Biogen Idec worked with the San Diego County Office of Education, San Diego City Schools and the San Diego Science Alliance to develop programs and curriculum tied to the state of California’s educational science standards.
In the 2005-’06 school year, the company hosted interactive science programs for 878 students from 30 seventh-grade classes.
“Community Lab classes have also learned about clinical trials testing,” Glidden said. “In this exploration, students test simulated patient samples to determine whether patients who have been treated with a new medicine get better. Hands-on activities include using micropipettes, performing a protein assay, called an ELISA. In it, students prepared a standard curve utilizing a spectrophotometer (platereader) and related software to analyze results.”
San Diego County seventh-grade students must follow a curriculum focused on life sciences.
“Due to special circumstances during our inaugural year, we did have a handful of classes from high schools throughout the region,” Glidden said. “However, for the coming academic year, we will be focusing solely on seventh-grade life-science classes, with plans to increase participation by more than half.”
For the 2006-’07 school year, the Community Lab has accepted applications for 30 new teachers to attend the summer institute in August.
“This is in preparation for bringing their students to Community Lab during the academic year,” Glidden said. “Next year, teachers from our inaugural year, who will be returning with new classes of students, will join these new teachers and their students. Our goal is to host at least 1,500 seventh-grade students next year.”
By partnering with schools, businesses like Biogen Idec can bring real world practice to theory taught in the classroom.
“Community Lab shows students that science is more than just another subject in school,” Glidden added. “It demonstrates that science education can lead to a promising job. It is our hope that the Community Lab experience may drive more students to continue to study biology and perhaps even come back to work at Biogen Idec in the future.”
Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) is a biotechnology company with products and capabilities in oncology, neurology and immunology. It is committed to transforming scientific discovery into advances in healthcare. The company’s core capabilities include drug discovery, research, development, biomanufacturing and a global commercial infrastructure.
Biogen Idec Community Lab is located at 5200 Research Place in San Diego. For more information, visit www.biogen.com.