Jason Koski/University Photography

Mike Skelly of Fayetteville-Manlius and Kristina Fanghanel, who teaches in the Victor School District, work on a laboratory activity. This year's workshop was the first time the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers focused on microbiology.

Copyright © Cornell University

Barbara Eaglesham, a teaching support specialist in microbiology, gives a presentation to the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers.

Some teachers avoid classrooms during the summer. Others, like the 30 high school teachers who came to the Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT) alumni week workshop Aug. 1-4, find summer a good time to learn. And that was the case with this year's workshop taught by Cornell microbiologists.

"The goal of this workshop series is to not just teach teachers how to do microbiology experiments, but to have them learn how science is done," said Dan Buckley, Cornell assistant professor of soil microbial genomics, who helped develop the curriculum with CIBT staff member Bob Suran.

This year's workshop was the first time CIBT focused on microbiology. Every year, teachers, mostly from New York state, travel to Cornell for four full days of laboratory bench-work, lectures and self-administered experimental stations to learn about hands-on application of advanced biological techniques. The workshops are funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

On Aug. 3, participants entered the second part of a hands-on microbial diversity lab that illustrated Darwinian evolution by demonstrating how, under strong selective pressures, bacteria populations will differ from their parent strain in response to antibiotics. Such workshops are the first opportunity for many high school teachers to become familiar with advanced, university-level scientific techniques.

"They really do a great job at bringing us all up to their level," said Beth Chagrasulis '80, who has attended CIBT programs since 2000. Chagrasulis, who teaches college preparatory and advanced placement biology courses to high school students in Naples, Maine, will also participate in CIBT alumni workshops and return-to-campus workshops offered at Cornell in the fall.

"CIBT is great. They have always been able to successfully provide skills and lessons that teachers can take back to their schools," said Glenn Simpson, a high school microbiology lab instructor at Victor Senior High School in Victor, N.Y., who has been attending CIBT since the first one in 1990. He and his lab partner, Susan Sandbury of Rush-Henrietta Senior High School, both agreed that CIBT is one of the best teachers' resource programs in the nation, which is evidenced by the high return rate of participants who have attended CIBT workshops in the past.

Graduate student Sandra Holley is a writer intern at Chronicle Online.