First Science of the Eye Workshop Brings the Excitement of Vision Science
to Diverse Group of Teachers
By Lisa Guisbond
Click here to see workshop participants at work.
Though some traveled far and had already spent the day in the classroom, the teachers participating in the first Science of the Eye: Bringing Vision into the Classroom regional workshop were energetic, engaged and excited by the program. A diverse group filled a lab at UMass/Amherst’s beautiful new Integrated Sciences Building on October 8 for the 2 1/2-hour program led by Ishara Mills-Henry, Ph.D., an accomplished biochemist who has just completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. The program was co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Association of Biology Teachers (MABT) and MIT’s Science of the Eye program. (Special thanks go to Mort Stermheim of STEM Ed at UMass/Amherst, for securing the laboratory and procuring the snacks.)
The topic was Eye Development and Anatomy, and the workshop was broken into segments of brief lectures followed by hands-on laboratory activities meant for the teachers to adapt for their classrooms. Teachers looked at eye mutations in Drosophila (fruit flies) under the microscope, observing the strangely beautiful, red compound eye. Mills-Henry explained that similar genetic networks underlie both human and fly eye development, making the study of drosophila directly relevant to research into human eye development and disease. Later, the teachers dissected a cow’s eye, examining the structures involved in eye disease and vision problems.
The group included high school biology teachers Sharon McDonald from Athol and Kelly Pirog of Chicopee, as well as three community college professors and even one kindergarten teacher, Robin Gurdak-Foley, who explained that she teaches her students about the five senses and wanted to be sure the information she gives them is accurate.
Comments and questions from the teachers confirmed the idea that vision and the eye are inherently compelling topics, with several teachers saying they registered because of their personal interest in the topic, as well as their own vision and eye health. Greenfield Community College Professor Sandy Gokey, for example, teaches mathematics but said she came because of her personal interest in the topic.
The program will continue with a series of regional workshops throughout the state and several related conferences. Science of the Eye will return to western Massachusetts in the spring with a longer Saturday workshop. Also in the works is a conference on the Evolution of the Vertebrate Eye, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species. The conference will be on Friday, November 20, at MIT’s Whitehead Auditorium, featuring some of the nation’s foremost vision and eye development researchers, who will participate in an afternoon session directed at high school biology teachers.
Lisa Guisbond
Outreach Coordinator
Science of the Eye – Bringing Vision into the Classroom
Department of Biology, 68-330
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
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