Eleven high school students in the CAVIAT iCREATE bioscience class publicly presented their unique solutions to the authentic problem of tracking and reporting influenza-like illnesses in Coconino County. The presentations were held on March 7th at NAU's Center for Science Teaching and Learning. The students are in the second semester of this college-level course that earns credits from both Coconino Community College plus from Coconino High School or Flagstaff High School. The class meets after school for 2.5 hours each day from Monday to Thursday to learn the CTE (career and technical education) bioscience standards through an epidemiologic lens and with rich community involvement. Community partners include Coconino County Public Health Services District, North Country HealthCare, Northern Arizona Area Health Education Center, Northern Arizona Healthcare and TGen North. The students also gained assistance from Corryn Smith in using GIS technology for their reports. Instructors Dr. Aaron Tabor and Robert (Bobby) Woodruff co-teach the class at NAU. Both have extensive experience in research and education. They also include additional community partners for in-class presentations and field trips. Students have toured the Science and Health Building at NAU, the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (ECOSS) laboratories, the Clinical and Pathology Laboratory at Flagstaff Medical Center, and more! The students study disease-causing agents as then use the tools necessary to determine what microbes cause the illnesses. The class includes biosafety skills, microbiology techniques, DNA extraction, separation and analysis. Students take an end-of-year test to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Congratulations to all the students! And thank you to the community members that attended their presentations! NAU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dan Kain (Left), FUSD Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Mary K Walton (Center), and FUSD Superintendent Mike Penca (Right), all came to hear the student presentations and ask them questions about their unique solutions to this authentic community problem.
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The 12 CAVIAT students in the iCREATE high school bioscience class at NAU are learning some basic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) skills to help track patient health for their epidemiology projects. Corryn Smith patiently teaches the students the basics of GIS. Corryn has presented to the class twice this fall, and will certainly be helping them again as they prepare their group projects.
Corryn is an Instructor for the Geography, Planning, and Recreation department at NAU. She received her MS in Applied Geospatial Sciences with a Planning and Recreation Emphasis in May 2017. Her Master's thesis research looked at using geospatial technologies to locate travel networks (Forest Service roads and trails) in Flagstaff. Her interests include: geospatial technologies and recreation, geospatial technologies and sustainable land management, GIS in education, and Python Programming for Women and Minorities. Thank you Corryn for your friendly and professional help! Dr. Darlene Lee, an anatomical and clinical pathologist at Flagstaff Medical Center, led thirteen high school students in the iCREATE bioscience class on a fascinating tour of the Clinical and Pathology Laboratory at FMC on Monday, November 14th. Pathology is the study of disease, and a pathologist is a medical doctor (MD) who specializes in studying disease, including the source, extent, and cause of the disease in a patient. The students got to see many aspects of what this career entails. The students began the tour by seeing some of the high-tech diagnostic tools available to test patient samples. These included urinalysis, PCR, flow cytometry and light microscopy. Jane Talisman, one of the laboratory lead technicians, even did a rapid test from Cate’s mucosal sample to determine if she had MRSA. Read to the end of the post to find out the result! The students then watched Garn Bailey, the Pathologists’ Assistant, as he prepared to dissect an excised gall bladder. The students were able to touch the gall bladder to see what it felt like. The dissected gall bladder had several gallstones in it that were too large to exit the gall bladder on their own. A frozen tissue sample from a patient came in, and the tour immediately switched over to observing the pathology team process this sample for the surgeon and patient waiting for it in the operating room. The pathology team can receive and process a sample, and return a diagnosis to a surgeon, within 20 minutes. This intraoperative pathology consultation helps guide the surgeon through the remainder of the procedure, so the patient has a better outcome. Garn put the sample on the cryostat, a machine that keeps the sample frozen while shaving off very thin slices for placing on microscope slides. Audrey McMillon, a histotechnologist, then stained the samples with a specific stain to highlight what the surgeon needed to view. Histology is the study of the microscopic structure of tissues. There are four pathologists at FMC and one at Verde Medical Center. In order to become a pathologist, you need a four-year college degree, then a four-year medical school degree, and then you need to complete your pathology residency for another four years! If you want to do a subspecialty fellowship, that takes another 1-2 years. After the students completed the tour, Dr. Lee shared a presentation with three different case studies for the students to discuss. Just as Garn had previously, Dr. Lee reaffirmed that in order to recognize an abnormal pathology you need to know what the normal anatomy and histology looks like. During the cases, Dr. Lee asked the students what they thought, and what tests they would run to try and solve the case. At the end of the presentation, Cate got the results from her diagnostic test. We were all thrilled she did not have Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as MRSA! Note the sign above the door in the photo above. This important message reflects the commitment of the pathology team: Patients are our Purpose.
STEM City and the iCREATE collaborative thank Dr. Lee and the entire team in the Clinical and Pathology Lab for being such willing presenters, and for providing important and engaging information to the students. Thank you! The Girls on the Run season finale on November 11th at Coconino High School included a Hall of Heroes with many STEM professionals represented! Thank you so much to the following Wonder Women for participating in the 2016 Hall of Heroes! Medical professionals, Dr. Kate Preston, Dr. Margaret Donnelly and Clinical Pharmacist Randee Fullenwider, all shared their experiences in the medical field with the girls. Mechanical Engineer Beth Cooperrider, Lawyer Jennifer Mott, and Wildland Forest Fighter Maggie Knight shared their journeys and careers with the girls. Lowell Observatory Astronomers Dr. Lisa Prato and Dr. Deidre Hunter shared starry wonders, and Lisa Lamberson, owner of Mountain Sports, described the joys and challenges of running a successful store in downtown Flagstaff.
Thank you all for your contributions to empowering our young women through the Girls on the Run Hall of Heroes! Guest Blog by Marney Babbitt, NAHEC Youth Program Coordinator, Girls on the Run of Northern Arizona Council Director, North Country HealthCare In early June, 40 high school students from rural and underserved areas in Arizona attended the Future Health Leaders Summer Camp (FHL), including a Williams High School student from the iCREATE bioscience class. The camp was sponsored by the Northern Arizona, Eastern Arizona, Southern Arizona and Greater Valley Area Health Education Centers. This week long camp was hosted at the University of Arizona. FHL has a number of objectives:
Highlights this year included:
Our 2017 camp for current high school students will be held at Northern Arizona University in June of 2017. Applications will be available in early 2017. Please contact Marney Babbitt (mbabbitt@nchcaz.org) for more information. Guest Blog by Dave Engelthaler, Originally published for the Northern Arizona Leadership Alliance in the Flagstaff Business News - November 10, 2015 As hopefully most readers know, Flagstaff declared itself as America’s first STEM Community in 2012. STEM (the ubiquitous acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is commonly discussed in our schools, in academia and in workforce development as a goal for literacy in the 21st Century. In Flagstaff, we have a wealth of STEM resources in our businesses (e.g., Gore & Assoc., SenesTech, Machine Solutions, Northern Az Healthcare, etc.) and research institutions (e.g., Lowell Observatory, TGen North, Museum of Northern Arizona, etc.), let alone NAU and Coconino Community College. In the fall of 2012, Flagstaff Forty, now known as the Northern Arizona Leadership Alliance, initiated a community conversation and ensured a community commitment to using these resources to support and improve our local schools’ ability to achieve STEM literacy for all students.
Over past several years, our STEM City has grown in stature and success. We are continually held as a model for community leadership and collective action on STEM. The reasons are numerous but some of the highlights include: having a community board dedicated to advancing all STEM in the community; having the annual celebration of the STEM Teacher, Leader and Student of the Year; the Superbowl of STEM Event held annually in NAU’s Skydome, which brings out nearly 10% of the city’s population; Flagstaff’s Festival of Science, the longest running one of its kind in the nation; and most importantly the abundant activities and interactions between students, teachers and local scientists and engineers, which end in unparalleled STEM learning opportunities and radical inspiration of hundreds to thousands of our students. Now, we are moving to the next level of community engagement – coordinated community impact. Rather than just one-on-one interfaces with STEM businesses and classrooms, we have now moved to a model of having multiple businesses work with academia and multiple schools on a coordinated program to educate and enrich both the students and the community. Through the leadership at NAU’s Center for Science Teaching and Learning, the National Science Foundation has recently awarded a three-year $840K grant to build a yearlong Bioscience course for Flagstaff high schoolers. NAU has brought together TGen North, North Country Healthcare, the County Public Health department, Flagstaff Unified Schools District, the Coconino Association for Vocations Industry and Technology (CAVIAT) and the STEM City Center to build a real-world problem solving bioscience course for CAVIAT students, 44% of which are Native American. The vision for this program encompasses outlying county schools as well. Where else would high school students get to work closely with doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, and genomic scientists on development of a tool to detect and track influenza-like illness in their schools and neighborhoods? Where else but our STEM City. The Northern Arizona Leadership Alliance strongly encourages all community members to join the movement towards a stronger, more sustainable 21st Century economy but supporting STEM literacy. Find more information here! Flagstaff Medical Center’s Future Health Leaders Summer Camp Flagstaff Medical Center, a member of Northern Arizona Healthcare, held its first Future Medical Leaders summer camp for high school students from Monday, July 6, through Thursday, July 9. The event, sponsored by Patient and Family Experience Services, was designed for incoming high school freshmen through senior students interested in becoming healthcare professionals. More than 40 students applied to attend the camp, but only 24 were selected to participate. There were nineteen young women and five young men representing five high schools in Flagstaff (Coconino High School, Flagstaff High School, BASIS Flagstaff, Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy and Northland Preparatory Academy) as well as one home-schooled student. The students spent the week attending lectures about contemporary healthcare topics; visiting different departments and discussing ethical issues. They met with Rob Thames, NAH’s president and CEO, and spent time with physicians, nurses and other colleagues who care for patients. They also participated in hands-on activities, such as a trauma lab, where they practiced patient-care scenarios and learned CPR and first-aid. On the last day of camp, they worked on their public speaking skills and developed basic resumes. Flagstaff Medical Center is a member of Northern Arizona Healthcare, which also provides healthcare services through Verde Valley Medical Center, Team Health, Verde Valley Medical Clinic, Cancer Centers of Northern Arizona Healthcare, EntireCare Rehab & Sports Medicine, Fit Kids of Arizona, Guardian Air, Guardian Medical Transport, Heart & Vascular Center of Northern Arizona, Northern Arizona Homecare, Northern Arizona Hospice and Valley View Care. For more information on Flagstaff Medical Center programs and services, visit FlagstaffMedicalCenter.com. “Like” FMC at Facebook.com/FlagstaffMedicalCenter. Thank you to Patient and Family Experience Services at NAH who hope to host this event again next year. And a special thank you to Sophia Papa, Public Relations with Northern Arizona Healthcare, for the primary writing of this post.
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