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ILONA MIKO: Welcome to NatureEdCast. I’m Ilona Miko. And today we’re talking to Rupa Shevde, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Director of Education and Outreach at the Morgridge Institute for Research.
After a robust career as a senior scientist working on understanding osteoblast development and bone regeneration, Rupa now splits her time between her lab research and educational outreach activities at the Morgridge Institute, which was itself founded to facilitate the translation of research into effective therapies.
Rupa, along with her team, has spearheaded multiple educational workshops and programs for students from all walks of life. Most recently, Rupa conducted a middle school science camp, where students from the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, were paired together with students from the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program around the subject of stem cells.
Welcome, Rupa.
RUPA SHEVDE: Hi, Ilona. I’m glad to be here.
MIKO: Thanks for joining us. So tell us a little bit about Morgridge. What is the origin of the Morgridge Institute and what is its mission?
SHEVDE: Yes. We’re very excited about our new institute, which is the Morgridge Institute for Research. This is a new private not-for-profit interdisciplinary biomedical research institute. It is dedicated to the vision of discovery to delivery. And by that we mean that our institute would facilitate the movement of science from the laboratories of research to the public use around the world as treatments and cures come along.
It is associated with and located on the campus of UW–Madison and is a part of the twin institutes, which is called the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. It is a public/private initiative that facilitates interdisciplinary research and breakthrough discoveries to advance human health and medicine.
Now our institute leverages the best of a great public university along with the flexibility and resources of a world-class private research institute.
And our ultimate goal is to improve human health by improving the way scientists collaborate with each other, make discoveries, deliver the discoveries, and in that entire process educate everyone.
MIKO: So building on that education goal — the very last part of what you said — I understand you’ve spearheaded some exciting interactive educational programs around the theme of stem cells. So tell us a little bit. What are the target audiences for these educational efforts?
SHEVDE: So our program is actually divided in two categories. Through our sister organization or affiliate, which is known as WiCell Research Institute, we offer a three-day intense hands-on laboratory training course, which is actually dedicated to scientists who need to learn the culture and maintenance of stem cells so that they can go back to their own labs and be successful in their own research endeavors.
Through this program, we are happy to say that we have trained over 900 scientists from over 30 states in this country and 19 other countries.
The second aspect of our program is called Morgridge Outreach Experiences. And this is the program that focuses on working with K through 12 students, teachers as well as the general public. In this program we have fieldtrips, school visits, after-school enrichment activities, one-day lab workshops, just to name a few. Our goal through this program is to really make science accessible and exciting for students from all walks of life.
We’re all aware, Ilona, of the fact that our country’s facing a significant decrease in the number of students entering the science and engineering workforce. As scientists I feel that it behooves us to come alongside our teachers and our educators to change this grim future.
And as you know, recent studies have shown that just 26% of our high school graduates have a good chance of completing a first-year college science course. This problem also as we know is severe among the underserved or the underprivileged students and also students who attend rural schools.
It is for this reason that we have designed programs that offer opportunities to underserved populations as well as students in schools with meager resources.
One example is a rural Wisconsin camp for high school students. This will be our fifth year of camp and what we do is we bring four students and one teacher from five different rural Wisconsin schools to a four-day camp. The process of selection of students is done by the teachers through learning about stem cells from the materials we send them, giving the students a quiz, and then the students writing an essay on what they think the future of stem cell science looks like.
The students and the teachers have the opportunity to stay on the UW–Madison campus so they understand how college life works. They also can get rid of the fear of the unknown because rural Wisconsin students are afraid to come to a big campus.
And through the science that we let them do in our labs and through the lectures and a lot of different activities, we help boost their confidence. We encourage them to consider a science career. And overall we give them a really memorable experience in their incoming senior year.
We also have a middle school camp, Ilona, which is called a Generation Acceleration Camp. And this is a little bit of a different camp because we try to bring students from a different state and pair them with middle school students from Madison, Wisconsin, or Milwaukee or some other neighboring areas of Madison.
In this camp our goal is really to excite and engage the young or junior scientists, as we call them, and help them understand that science is relevant to real life. And give them lots of ideas and information about science careers.
This summer we’re also excited to host our very first career choice camp, where we’re going to expose the students to a variety of options in the science careers because we have noticed that a lot of students and teachers think that there is a science teacher and then there is a scientist. But they fail to understand that there is a span of different types of professions between a science teacher and a scientist’s career. So our hope is to really open their eyes to what type of careers are available in the field of science or around science.
MIKO: That’s definitely true. A lot of adults don’t know that there are other things to be besides just a scientist or just a teacher.
Going back to the middle school — junior scientists you were talking about¬ — you know many students don’t encounter stem cells at all until well into their biology curriculum, maybe in college. So I’m curious from your perspective, what are some of the particular challenges or delights of teaching these middle schoolers about laboratory research using stem cells? And also just the process of science?
SHEVDE: That is a good question. We believe that the middle school students are really wonderful. They’re fun to work with because they’re always excited and eager to learn new things.
One of the challenges we face is that most middle school curriculums do not cover extensive cell biology. So when we work with the schools, we send the teachers the materials related to stem cell science, such as primers and glossary, interesting scientific articles. And teachers can then offer the background information and familiarize the students with the relevant terminology.
This way when they come to us or we go to visit their classroom, we can incorporate a lot of hands-on activities without having to spend time on the basic concepts.
Another interesting observation that the teachers have made is that while studying stem cell science, the students were really able to make a direct connection between science and day-to-day life. As the students were learning about potential treatments that would come from stem cell research, they started sharing with the class that they knew someone who had a heart attack and now they understood why it was and how it could be treated in the future. Also, one of the students said that he had older sibling that had a sports related leg fracture and the doctors had inserted rods and plates to hold the bones together but also had expressed concerns about the deterioration of bone density at the site of injury.
So the teacher shared with us that they observed historically when dissecting a cockroach the relationship that the students had in real life was to stomp on it. So they never understood why they needed to study cockroaches in science. But when they started studying stem cells they clearly understood why it is important and why students study stem cells.
These are just a few examples and you know through everything we do our goal is that we really want to empower and excite this next generation of scientists and drive home the message that science has great relevance in our daily lives.
MIKO: So I’m curious, just from your perspective as a scientist and an educator who’s taught and done workshops with a variety of different ages, why do you think understanding stem cells was so important for students and the public alike?
SHEVDE: That is a very good question. We believe that it is really important for students from all walks of life to have an understanding about stem cells because there is either a lot of ignorance or misinformation associated with this subject.
I have had the opportunity to speak to a diverse group of people and a lot of them think that stem cells come from aborted fetuses. Many people are surprised when they realize that stem cells were derived from surplus blastocysts, which is actually a five-day-old embryo created in a Petri dish in an in vitro fertilization clinic. And this is given to the scientists or donated to research only after the parents have decided to do so.
The other fact that most people don’t know is as of 2002 there are almost 400,000 excess blastocysts frozen in liquid nitrogen in various places in the country. So we feel that giving information is really important.
Our goal as scientists is to educate people by giving them the facts. But we are also very sensitive to people’s religious beliefs and we do respect their decisions about being either for or against stem cell research.
MIKO: Well, thank you, Rupa, for telling us by your workshops and your outreach efforts and particularly efforts to excite the next generation of scientists.
SHEVDE: Thank you, Ilona, for this opportunity to showcase our program and also thank you on behalf of scientists that work tirelessly not just to do their research but to also invest in the next generation of scientists.
MIKO: Thank you for listening to this edition of NatureEdCast. You can find this podcast and others at nature.com/scitable. That’s nature.com/s-c-i-t-a-b-l-e.
Please join us again next time.
