Science summit Laboratory’s student event helps MDI pupils develop love of biology

Did you know the common cold, stomach flu, conjunctivitis and strep throat are the top reasons children miss school?

Those were the findings of four middle-schoolers who played hooky from their classes at Pemetic Elementary School in Southwest Harbor and participated in the first Student Summit on Biomedical Research held last month at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor. A collaboration forged earlier this year between the MDI Bio Lab and Union 98, encompassing the MDI area schools, the summit drew 30 pupils from four elementary schools.

“It gives students the opportunity to explore on their own some fairly advanced scientific topics, and to ask their own questions of what makes those topics interesting,” Michael McKernan, director of education at the MDI Biol Lab, said of the summit. “It gives them the opportunity to present in front of their peers. It gives them the opportunity to interact with scientists on many levels.”

Sarah Winne, coordinator of the gifted and talented program at Conners-Emerson School in Bar Harbor, said she was proud of the 17 pupils participating from her school. She said the science students were full of enthusiasm, but their knowledge of biology was weak.

“We had the topics of gene therapy, cloning and the Human Genome Project,” she said. “They had to acquire all that background information to understand their topic. They did an amazing job, and they started from scratch.”

Catherine Sharp, 12, a seventh-grader at Mount Desert Elementary School in Northeast Harbor, said she found her research on stem cells “really interesting,” and she learned that cloned animals die sooner than their noncloned counterparts.

“The hardest part was … getting it all together and making it sound halfway presentable,” she said of her research experience.

Ailish Fahey, 10, a fifth-grader at Mount Desert Elementary School, said that she needed to bone up on scientific building blocks as she worked on the topic of environmental health.

“I had to do the basics,” she said.

As the youngsters learned about cells, chromosomes, genes and DNA, they could ask questions of scientists from The Jackson Laboratory and the MDI Bio Lab on a Web log, or blog site. They also learned, just as professional scientists must, how to work with people they didn’t know. Winne mixed up the middle schoolers, placing pupils from different grades together.

“The students loved it,” Winne said. “They learned to rely on each other.”

After hearing all eight research presentations from their peers, the children had the chance to learn more about the MDI Bio Lab, which conducts research on marine animals.

A group of children clustered in one of the lab’s wood-paneled laboratories, holding the spiny purple sea urchins that technician Seth Carbonneau passed around the room.

“The reason we study urchins is that they are developmentally similar to humans,” he said. “This is the only echinoderm that a genome project is being done on.”

Ailish Fahey examined an urchin alongside Catherine Sharp.

“It’s fun,” she said.

McKernan said he hoped that the fun will translate into a long-term love of science.

“My hope is that it captures their imaginations,” he said, “and that more students will decide to pursue science in high school and college and beyond.”

Abigail Curtis can be reached at 667-9395 and acurtis@bangordailynews.net.