INSTITUTIONAL INITIATIVE—GENOMIC EDUCATION
Governor Kay Ivey, center, with members of the Governor's Advisory Council for Excellence in STEM, including Neil Lamb, PhD, fifth from left.
investigate different dog traits and determine wheth- er they are inherited or shaped by the environment. The activity will be piloted during 2021, and introduced across Alabama classrooms in 2022.
Middle School GPS offers Alabama public middle school science educators free one-day workshops that empha- size the genetics components of the Alabama 7th grade Life Science course of study. The theme of the second round of workshops was Pet Genetics . The lessons in- clude activities such as digging into the domestication of dogs and cats, simulating the inheritance patterns of fancy goldfish, and examining the role of enzymes in rare neurological disorders in cats. The Educational Outreach team also completed its fourthroundof GeneticResources toEmpowerAlabama Teachers (GREAT) workshops for high school educators. The two-day workshop updates high school educators’ genetics knowledge by highlighting recent scientific findings and applications based on the discoveries. This iteration of the program linked agriscience applica- tions to biology concepts. Both the Middle School GPS and GREAT workshops are intended to make genetics content engaging and approachable. In early 2019, Lamb was appointed by Alabama Gov- ernor Kay Ivey to lead the Governor’s Advisory Council for Excellence in STEM. The meetings with the coun- cil resulted in the creation of Alabama’s Roadmap to Excellence in STEM . Lamb was then appointed as Chair of the newly formed Alabama STEM Council, which was a key recommendation that came from the Roadmap . The group will figure out how to advance STEM educa- tion in the state of Alabama, a goal that Lamb and his team have always worked toward at HudsonAlpha. n
In addition to offering cutting-edge digital resourc- es and hands-on kits for students, the Educational Outreach teamalso offers a number of educator resourc- es and training courses to equip teachers with the infor- mation and skills necessary to reach their students. The Educational Outreach team launched a second round of their Middle School GPS program in fall of 2019. Some materials from the Pet Genetics: Gaudy Goldfish and Cat Conundrum kits, developed by HudsonAlpha's Educational Outreach team
2019-20 Research Report 47
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