Overview
Although our main emphasis in Human Practices was to gain knowledge on the appeal of manufacturing a new therapeutic, we also took time into advancing synthetic biology’s application into our community. However, we took a different approach in educating the general public, as we found there to be multiple restrictions in advocating against addiction as high schoolers in LA. Therefore, we focused more on raising awareness to how synthetic biology could be incorporated in research to solve pressing issues in the world, and also encourage peers to engage in expanding their knowledge of this field.
Curriculum Implementation
What makes this portion of our project so unique is that we sought to make a further impact than simply providing
students with a one time experience in elementary or middle school. Therefore, our target impact was high schoolers as
we had many reach out to us in interest in joining the team, but we were unable to accept due to the lack of funds.
Yet, the continuous desire for us to establish something permanent which can influence even future generations of
high schoolers led us to talk with our high school about implementing a whole course centered around synthetic biology
or its adjacent.
One unique feature of our school is in the Brahma Tech program, where courses outside of the general academic
classes are offered. They were in the works of developing a new biotechnology curriculum, so we took this opportunity
to meet with the coordinators and teachers to talk about the possibility of implementing iGEM or some synthetic
biology applications into the course. The result of this meeting led to further discussions, but because this class’
date of implementation seems to be in 2025, we are still in active communication with the department. We hope to
continue this portion of our work throughout next year, as we believe that public schools should still give students
the opportunity to participate in hands-on labs and are crucial in the development of research skills. We also understand
that planning a whole new branch takes time, and will continue to strive for providing more opportunities both in and out
of school.
Some examples of our educational content include:
We also were able to reach a large demographic which included age ranges and different countries:
Social Media Outreach (@calimod.ca)
We as a team also agreed that the most relevant way to relay information to the public is through social media, hence our resolve to build our platform up.
Through our educational posts that are simplified into information that is easy to digest, we managed to reach over 30,000 people in the past 90 days, and heavily improved on our following.