![]() After completing her Ph.D., she moved to the UConn Health Center in Farmington, Conn., to work on the herpes simplex virus, the cause of cold sores and shingles. at the University of Arizona in Tucson, focusing on bacteriophages. The Louisiana native earned a Bachelor of Science degree in her home state and completed her Ph.D. Burch said that it is natural for her to focus on biology as a teaching tool because it links with her own specialty. elegans to provide students with experience in molecular biology, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, and structural biology.ĭr. cerevisiae (yeast) system to studies with nematode C. Other on-campus projects range from cancer studies using the simple S. It is possible one of these students will find a way but we are really using phage hunting as a tool to understand science.”īerkshire is proudly posting the results of its research on the Mycobateriophage Database, joining an extensive list of colleges, universities and a handful of other secondary schools. Bacteria are becoming more and more drug resistant, so we need other ways to control them. These are viruses that live on all our surfaces, so they are safe for the students to work with. “The students are investigating viruses that infect bacteria. “We are doing amazing things here,” said Dr. The term is derived from “bacteria” and the Greek word phagein, which means “to devour.” Burch explained that “phage” is short for bacteriophage, a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria. At present, most of the students in her program are “phage” hunting, a process through which students search for novel viruses from environmental samples.ĭr. Burch’s leadership, they then conduct real research in fields seldom open to high school students. Students must apply to the program, and qualified applicants are admitted after interviews. “I am accepting a rising sophomore for next year,” she said. To date, the course has been limited to junior and seniors, but, with the new laboratory, Dr. In the AM/SR course, students build on the foundation of knowledge acquired in the regular Berkshire curriculum. Burch continued as she sat in the state-of-the art laboratory of the school’s new Bellas/Dixon Math and Science Center, which opened last fall. “I am interested in taking science education to the next level, where students learn by doing,” Dr. “But Berkshire will have been first,” she said, “the first to truly invest in basic research, technology-driven, hands-on learning for its student body.” She believes that if the program is successful at Berkshire, it is an education experiment that will be replicated all over the country-primarily in independent schools at first because of the financial constraints faced by the public education system. Burch came to the school in May as director of the AM/SR program, and she terms it “a one-of-a-kind program that will change how we educate students in this country.” Berkshire’s Advanced Math/Science Research (AM/SR) course, modeled after a handful of such courses around the country, is the first at an independent school to house an on-campus research lab supervised by a resident scientist, Dr. ranked 11th in fourth-grade math, ninth in eighth-grade math, seventh in fourth-grade science and 10th in eighth-grade science.Ĭlearly there is room for improvement, but a cutting-edge science program offered at Berkshire School, a private college preparatory school in Sheffield, Mass., may provide a model for the future of science education at the nation’s elite schools. Meanwhile, a new report, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, showed that the U.S. students recently finished 25th in math and 17th in science in a ranking of 31 countries. The National Math and Science Initiative Web site notes, for instance, that U.S. Despite waves of educational reforms, the worry has not lessened, with recent reports underscoring the continuing challenge.
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