SMART Teams

Students Modeling A Research Topic

Photo:A teacher overlooks a team's progress SMART Teams are teams of high school students and their teacher working with research scientists to design and construct physical models of the proteins that are being investigated in their laboratories. The primary goal of the SMART Team program is to connect high school students to the real world of science that exists in an active biomolecular research

The SMART Team program has evolved from our summer course for high school teachers entitled Modeling the Molecular World, Part 1: Tactile Teaching with Physical Models. The course provides teachers with updated information in the area of molecular structure and function, as well as access to new tools and technologies with which they can make the invisible molecular world real for their students. Find out more about SMART Teams.

Read what others are saying about the MSOE SMART Team program:

Images of Anthrax: A Team Approach
  by Jon Knopp, Chem Matters, December 2002, pages 4-6
Put Your Lab in a Different Class
  by Sally Goodman, Nature, 420, pages 11-14 (2002)
Models of Excitement: Teachers use rapid prototyping to build protein structures.
  by Toni Shears, HHMI Bulletin June 2002, pages 46-47
Tactile Teaching: Exploring protein structure/function using physical models
  by Tim Herman, Jennifer Morris, Shannon Colton, Ann Batiza, Mike Patrick, Margaret Franzen and David Goodsell Biochem. Mol. Biol. Educ. 34, 247-254 (2006)
Rethinking Outreach: Teaching the process of science through modeling.
  by Tim Herman, Shannon Colton and Margaret Franzen, PLOS (in press)

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