Gene Connection
San Mateo County Biotechnology Education Partnership
http://www.geneconnection.com
Senior Partnership Coordinator and BABEC President Emerita
Pat Seawell
pat --at-- geneconnection.org
Gene Connection/Chem Connection (G=C/C:C), the San Mateo County biotechnology education partnership, is a collaborative project including the San Mateo County Office of Education, Cañada College, the Genentech Foundation for Biomedical Science, Oracle, the Peninsula Community Foundation and New England Biolabs. The project provides all the logistics, materials and support for the implementation of an innovative biotechnology laboratory program for high school students in San Mateo County, California. Since its inception in 1990, the program has grown to engage over 11,000 students annually and now reaches all of the county's comprehensive public high schools, plus 2 charter schools and 4 private high schools.
Gene Connection has four and a half full sets of equipment and supplies, which are transported among schools and headquarters by the County Office of Education. Two full-time and three part-time coordinator/educators manage the kits, provide teacher training and classroom support. Each unified school district has teacher representation on the steering committee that directs the project.
In addition to the biotechnology labs, we bring computer and web-based curricular activities into the classroom to enhance the biotechnology content. In 2003-04 we initiated a chemistry outreach program using conductivity probes to explore principles of mass/charge of compounds and UV-VIS spectrophotometers to determine caffeine content in popular beverages.