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CULTIVATING A PASSION FOR RESEARCH
University of Idaho fish expert helps Filer High School students discover the art in science
“It’s pretty unique …that a high school biotech class
can do a complex analysis … I’m sure
they know more than I will ever know
about molecular genetics, so I’m impressed.”
—Ken Lepla, Idaho Power white sturgeon project biologist
by Marlene Fritz
Science, says Chris Malberg, is suspense. Not an anxious kind of suspense—an exhilarating kind. “You’re never exactly sure what you’re going to get. You’re taking the ‘what ifs’ and finding out what they are.”
Malberg, a senior at Filer High School who plans a career in marine biology or biotechnology, is completing his senior project with University of Idaho animal scientist Madison “Matt” Powell at the Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station.
Applying the same genetic techniques that crime-scene investigators use, Malberg is exploring potential genetic differences within a population of Oregon coho salmon that divides itself into colder and warmer waters. Malberg spends several afternoons a week at the University of Idaho’s Hagerman center 40 miles away.
Filer High School students Barbara Tapia, left, and Nicole Eldredge prepare
a master mix for a PCR reaction in which sturgeon DNA will be copied or amplified.
High school teachers also conduct research
During the past three years, Filer High School science teachers Ed Richards and Ken Young have also spent summers at Hagerman.
Funded by a Partners in Science grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Richards and Young push their own scientific envelopes as they examine the genetic makeup of two Idaho “species of special concern”—lamprey and white sturgeon. Richards has designed and developed a set of molecular markers for lamprey, and he and Young have tested and are using an existing pair of molecular markers for white sturgeon.
As they optimize the eight markers that will eventually net them a full genetic fingerprint of sturgeon, they teach their students how to extract DNA from fin tissue, copy it, and analyze it during the school year.
“I love this class” and “stay after most days”
Katherine DeHaan, another senior in the Filer High School biotechnology class, watches fluorescent orange bands of dyed DNA light up against an ultraviolet background in a darkened anteroom of her school’s science laboratory.
The bands had formed when DNA fragments of different sizes had migrated different distances across an electrified gel. “I love this class. It’s my favorite class by far,” says DeHaan. “I stay after class most days, just doing projects. We’re learning how to do PCR and RFLP—that’s kind of a mouthful, I’m sorry.”
Adult-stumping acronyms for “polymerase chain reaction” and “restriction fragment length polymorphism” roll off the teens’ lips as they painstakingly move DNA-containing droplets back and forth between tiny tubes. “You read about it, you don’t know what it is, and now we’re doing it,” says junior Holly Hansing.
Making the agarose gel in which the DNA will be electrified and prompted to “band out,” classmate Cacie Bitzenburg says “this has been really inspiring. It’s opened up a whole new world for us.
“Normally, I’m interested in art, but there is even art in science. You wouldn’t think there would be, but science makes you think outside the box.”
Discovering the art in science
Teacher Ken Young (top), at Filer High
School,
gives student Heidi Andreason a
vial
of stored sturgeon tissue from Idaho
Power while University of Idaho
animal
scientist Matt
Powell
observes.
Center, Javier Licea
looks at a preserved sturgeon.
Bottom, Chris Malberg uses
crime-scene techniques to
study
coho salmon genetics
for his senior
project at the
Hagerman Fish
Culture Experiment Station.
Helping kids see the art in science is precisely the reason that Powell devotes a significant and satisfying slice of his time to the Filer High School students and teachers.
“That’s why it’s called arts and sciences—it’s all in one,” he says. Few students, however, are exposed to science’s artistic side during their K-12 years.
“They don’t get that sense of discovery from their science classes that drives most all scientists,” says Powell, who is also the Hagerman center’s associate director. Instead, too many high-school biology classes are “trying to teach car designers to be mechanics.
“There has to be a little bit of mechanics in science, but we should be giving students palettes on which to sketch out solutions to tomorrow’s problems,” Powell says. “We should be saying, ‘OK, you design it—design something new.’”
Powell earned his bachelor’s degree in biology/zoology and his master’s degree in zoology at the University of Idaho before completing his Ph.D. in zoology at Texas Tech University. He doesn’t recall a time when critters—snakes, lizards, rabbits, ducks—weren’t a driving interest. “My mother’s three favorite phrases to me were, ‘What’s in the box?,’ ‘You can’t bring it inside,’ and ‘Just let it go.’”
But Powell also sharpened his native skills in writing. He’s written four screenplays—two of them with marine biology themes. One script soared into the top 108 of 5,000 entries in the 2006 Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellowship competition and is under review by prospective producers and agents.
Building new scientists: “Involve them and they will never forget”
Richards, who has taught high school for more than a quarter century, says science educators nationwide are striving to move classroom teaching beyond memorization and worksheets toward an appreciation of science as process.
“We are falling behind other countries,” he says. “We don’t have enough scientists in our nation for the scientific advancements that are going on. We have always led the world in science; it fuels our economy and technological growth. But to continue being leaders, we have to teach science in a manner that trains students well.”
Winner of both the Presidential Award for Excellence in Secondary Science and the Governor’s Industry Award for Notable Teaching in Science (GIANTS), Richards describes his teaching philosophy: “Tell them and they will probably forget; show them and they might remember; involve them and they will never forget.”
Because the white sturgeon DNA the 50 students are analyzing came from fin clippings collected by Idaho Power fisheries biologists, Richards and Young have not simply involved their biotechnology students—they’ve made them research-team members in a real-world study.
Idaho Power is monitoring the long-term effects of inhibited migration on white sturgeon from Shoshone Falls to Hells Canyon. Unable to use fish ladders to swim upstream, these huge bottom-hugging fish often live within single reaches between dams. If they subsequently become inbred, they’re less likely as a group to include diverse individuals that could survive environmental changes. But the operative word is “if.”
“At first, it was very confusing. But that’s science:
you gain confidence by working through the confusion.”
—Ken Young, Filer High School science teacher
When results aren’t known
“That’s why this project is so rewarding to us as teachers,” says Young. “The lab isn’t a textbook canned lab. It’s the real deal. The results aren’t already known, and that’s what makes it exciting.”
Yes, the students were “a little overwhelmed at first that we could let them do this kind of research with this kind of equipment, but once they got involved, they took ownership,” says Young. “At first, it was very confusing. But that’s science: you gain confidence by working through the confusion.”
“I don’t know too many high school students who are doing original research in DNA,” says Richards. “It’s awesome. We’re introducing these rural kids in Filer, Idaho, to a field that’s bulging, and we have a link to a lab that’s world renowned.”
University of Idaho helps equip new school lab
Powell has contributed much more than his time to the cooperative project with Filer High School and Idaho Power. When he consolidated his University of Idaho Aquaculture Research Institute laboratory in Moscow with his laboratory in Hagerman, he donated excess equipment to the high school.
Says Richards: “One day last spring [2006], Matt calls me up and says, ‘We’re ready to go. Get a U-Haul.’ So we went up to Moscow, loaded it up, and brought it here.”
The university donated a DNA fragment analyzer that had previously been loaned to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, plus several DNA-copying PCR thermocyclers, a gel documentation station, water baths, incubators, and pipettes. With all this, Richards and Young converted half their science classroom into a biotechnology laboratory. They used $6,000 from the Murdock Trust and $2,000 from their school district to buy other needed equipment and supplies.
Biotechnology research can easily bust the budget of the average high school science department. Richards and Young each get a $1,000 supplies budget annually. “Just the enzyme that is needed to allow the DNA to copy itself would cost me $2,000 if I had to buy it,” Richards says.
Murdock’s Partners in Science program provides high school science teachers with opportunities to conduct cutting-edge research with investigators in academic labs and then to extend that work into the classroom.
“High school teachers typically have great factual knowledge in many areas of science, but it’s not uncommon for them to have had no opportunity to actually do science,” says Bart Hadder, Murdock Trust program director. When teachers get those opportunities and share them with their classes, their students “have a greater chance of getting excited about science and of actually becoming scientists.”
“I don’t know too many high school students
who are doing original research in DNA.
It’s awesome. We’re introducing these rural kids
in Filer, Idaho, to a field that’s just bulging,
and we have a link to a lab that’s world-renowned.”
—Ed Richards, Filer High School science teacher
Student numbers grow along with DNA because it’s “cool”
Richards’ and Young’s efforts are multiplying student numbers along with DNA. Brodie Parrott, a junior, signed up for the biotechnology class because “the seniors before us told us it was pretty cool.”
At Idaho Power, white sturgeon project biologist Ken Lepla thinks it’s cool, too. “It’s a pretty unique situation that a high school biotech class can do a complex analysis and use machinery to run samples,” he says. “I’m sure they know more than I will ever know about molecular genetics, so I’m impressed.”
Every five years, Idaho Power fisheries biologists survey high-priority reaches of the Snake River for changes in white sturgeon populations. Reach by reach, they record data on weights, lengths, age, reproductive status, and other factors to assess the population’s health. For more than a decade, they’ve also collected fin clippings the size of pencil erasers so the fish can be analyzed all the way down to the DNA level.
White sturgeon—which Lepla describes as a “mysterious, prehistoric-looking fish” that could historically reach over 16 feet in length and a thousand pounds in weight—mature very slowly. With only four to five generations a century, evidence of inbreeding won’t accumulate quickly. The first Snake River dam at Swan Falls, after all, was just built in 1901. “But in the long term, something may happen. If bottlenecks occur, we want to have trend data so agencies can develop appropriate policies to improve those things.”
Lepla, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fisheries resources at the University of Idaho, has delivered fin clippings to Powell’s lab since 1995, long before the year-old program with the students began.
As state and federal agencies decide what questions they want the archived and yet-to-be-collected tissue to answer, Lepla says the Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station will play an increasingly critical role. “They have the expertise to do this; we do not,” says Lepla. “We look to them to allow us to complete this project. Without Matt’s lab, we can’t do it.”
As director of the University of Idaho’s Center for Salmonid Freshwater Species at Risk, Powell leads conservation-genetics studies focusing on population and life histories of Idaho fish species.
Data netted by these studies help natural resources agencies and managers make informed decisions about species conservation and preservation.
In their lifetimes, these may not be the only answers the young scientists find. Bree-Anna Ferrell, a junior, is now “fascinated” with biology. She looks ahead: “It’s awesome that one of us in this room could discover a cure for AIDS.”
Contact Matt Powell at mpowell@uidaho.edu.
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