Dear Ag/Bio Teachers

Recently our ISU research team was awarded a federal grant to investigate plant genetic responses to infection. This project includes a substantial outreach component focused on helping instructors teaching middle or high school biology, genetics, or agriculture topics.

We would like your help identifying and recruiting innovative teachers that would be interested in help us identify content gaps in their current curricula. Specifically gaps that exist in regards to teaching transmission genetics (Mendelian inheritance), molecular genetics (central dogma), and plant pathology (disease triangle).

Our plan is to provide short videos to introduce students to plant anatomy and physiology, plant genetics (molecular and transmission), and infectious disease in plants followed by comprehensive case studies with support activities. In addition, we are looking to recruit teachers to participate in our Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program for summer 2021 and/or 2022. http://www.biotech.iastate.edu/RET/

To encourage broad representation from urban and rural schools plan to ask teachers from each of the 6 STEM Hub regions in Iowa to assist us with our project. Ideally, these teachers would be a mixture of biology and agriculture education teachers, as the concepts we are focused on overlap with both disciplines. Please feel free to share this information with these teachers and administrators!

If any interested schools or faculty would like more details, please contact the team by e-mail at nan1@iastate.edu . We would like to have interested faculty identified and participating faculty recruited by February 28, 2021.