Hopkins Bio-Engineering Lab: Access Opportunity #1

Overview of Access Opportunity #1

In this section I shall describe the first of two outside opportunities that I researched and made available to my students. I shall show how I encouraged my students to take advantage of this opportunity and indicate the manner in which it may open doors for them in the future.

John’s Hopkins is an institution renowned throughout the world for its robust and innovative role in scientific, technological, and academic research. This deserved distinction is perhaps no more evident as in this period of pandemic wherein the nation and world rely on public health practitioners who hail from Hopkins to provide accurate and actionable epidemiological data describing the course of the novel coronavirus. As a trained epidemiologist and public health researcher, it is no small point of pride that I have the distinction of being a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, poised (if the present Portfolio proves proficient) to receive a Master of Science degree from its acclaimed School of Education. It does not escape my consideration, however, that whereas many of my students live within blocks of its sprawling campus, they know no persons having an academic, administrative, medical or research role at this august institution. They do, however, know me.

Though as a simple student I can claim no special status at the school, it was within my capacity to use every connection at my disposal to give my students entrée into the institution. It was not arbitrary access that I sought but a meaningful opportunity that would expose my students to scientists engaged in research ideally relevant to topics they had been taught as well as to areas outside my sphere of competence. Therefore, in conceiving of a suitable field trip for my students I immediately thought of a colleague who had undergone research training at Hopkins and maintained working relationships with several scientists thereat. I informed my colleague of my interest in organizing a field trip to Hopkins, apprised her of the science background of my students and inquired whether her extant connections operated in areas that might align with these areas or prove fruitful in furthering their academic and scientific interest. She did indeed; nominally, the director of the department of biomedical engineering. Fortuitously, I found that the director was familiar with my writing in health and longevity and warmly welcomed my students for a visit (and thereafter graciously welcomed us for a subsequent visit, ostensibly owing to my students’ enjoyment, engagement, and enthusiasm).

Several steps needed to be taken to make this access opportunity maximally successful. One step was to link lessons that my students were learning in the classroom to technologies that were under investigation in the biomedical engineering lab. It became clear to me upon further investigation that long distance food transport solutions (among the lab’s extant projects) would fit well with the Project Based Learning (PBL) assignment addressing starvation and global hunger that I had given my students. More mundane matters included providing transportation, issuing and collecting permission slips, estimating the cost of the trip and obtaining administrative approval.

Project Based Learning: Framework for Students

I divided my students into several working groups. They were given guidance about what kind of information to include in their respective presentations. We spent several segments of class time collectively constructing a generic presentation framework that would be used by all to orally deliver their product pitches. As can be seen in the artifact, the information included ranged from a basic analysis of the the nutritional content and composition of their product to comparisons with competitors (i.e. classmates whose group products they were compelled to make known to the class) to how they would encourage and elicit financial investment in their products. A tentative understanding of what is required to bring ideas from conception to execution is requisite for opening doors in the real world. A project such as this, though demanding at this stage of their academic development, puts my students on the path of innovative thinking and design--two concepts not coincidentally included in the very name of the Hopkins bioengineering lab that was the site of Access Opportunity #1.

I consistently propounded to my students that producing an optimal product in a strictly scientific sense for our purpose of combating global hunger would be insufficient in itself if we could not secure funding to manufacture it and (most importantly) a means of distributing it. The latter necessity--transportation/delivery--is what made the bioengineering lab at Hopkins uppermost in my mind as an ideal access opportunity to tie into this PBL assignment, insofar as such engineering solutions are among their specialties.

Access to Innovation & Design

As a culminating unit project, I tasked my students with developing a product that could serve to alleviate starvation. Because it is the distribution of nutritious food that is often the prohibitive factor in forestalling famine and food shortages, I thought it would be beneficial to give my students access to scientists whose work involves generating engineering solutions to such problems. This is where the trip to Hopkins' bioengineering lab served as an ideal conceptual conduit. For at the lab my students were shown various projects underway at the time involving aerial transport (employing drones and cable systems among other engineering interventions) to deliver drugs and other vital medical aid to areas difficult to access. Clearly such technologies could be employed to deliver vital nutritional resources as well. Speculations of this sort served as topics of discussion during an informal brainstorming session upon our return to the classroom. A complex undertaking involving the extension of the work of the Hopkins lab to the matter of malnutrition is conceivable but not presently practicable. But this was a major purpose of the access opportunity in my mind: to show my students how a basic grasp of science and the rudiments of technology wedded with the resources of advanced institutions such as Hopkins can enable them to address real-world problems in a truly transformative way. This exceedingly rare opportunity for inner city students to observe and interact with accomplished engineers at the innovative pinnacle of their respective fields will open doors for my students; it has certainly opened their minds.

The pedagogical prelude to the access opportunity was a comprehensive classroom project centered upon solving the problem of global starvation. I chose this project because it necessitated the integration of several topics to which I had exposed my students, compelling them to extend their knowledge in a novel way. Further, it provided a natural nexus between their school-based project and their forthcoming Hopkins-based project.

I prepared my students for the preliminary project on starvation alleviation by focusing heavily upon human nutrition. Human health is dependent upon adequate nutrition. A grasp of basic biochemical, physiological, and anatomical knowledge is necessary for nutritional competence. There is evidence that African Americans exhibit greater indices of poorer health, preventable diseases, and premature mortality partly owing to modifiable lifestyle factors. Among these modifiable factors is diet quality. I therefore sought to integrate information on practical principles of nutrition into our unit on Organ Systems and Physiology. I also wanted to expand the perspective of my students and enlighten them to the irony that while poor nutrition commonly takes the form of overindulgence in deleterious foods and consequent obesity in affluent countries, the pressing dietetic danger is often starvation in economically disadvantaged nations. The lessons that I formulated accordingly underscored the importance of specific nutrient provisionment as essential to adequate nutrition as distinct from the magnitude of food ingested. I made my students aware that starvation is not simply a consequence of the lack of food. Rather, it commonly results from a lack of understanding of how to efficiently and economically provide essential nutrients and an inability of interested agencies and entities to deliver such nutrients to regions where they are needed.

Below are several artifacts that show the preparation that the multi-faceted learning project entailed.

Colleague Communication

Though this access opportunity was the consequence of my thought and action principally, collaboration with colleagues was crucial in bringing it to fruition. Because a sizable segment of the 7th grade was included in this excursion, many matters needed to be coordinated accordingly. This included rearranging schedules, determining which teachers (if any) would be able to assist with transportation (which was limited), ensuring adequate overlap and relevance of our respective instruction with the activities planned at the Hopkins lab, what additional supplies we would need and even how we would feed our pupils off-site. Several scheduled Professional Development sessions were devoted to these important tasks--a concession that was granted to us by the administration at my behest. Some of the correspondence that transpired between myself and my colleagues is captured in the accompanying artifact (left).

Family Engagement Component: Parent Volunteers as Chaperones

Budgetary limitations made our financial support from the school scarce. As such, outreach to parents was logistically indispensable. I organized several parents willing to serve as chaperones and sources of transport. To this fleet I added my own vehicle and that of two accompanying teachers. The presence of so many parent volunteers was a welcome way to showcase my students’ learning. More ambitiously, I hope it planted seeds in the minds of parents, prompting them to prepare to assist their children to become competitive candidates for such institutions as Hopkins in the very near future. Happily, several of my students expressed an interest in applying to Hopkins for college. I commit to doing what I can to facilitate their aims. This access opportunity, by stimulating interest and establishing informal relationships, will likely open many doors for my students.

Parent Communication

The classroom project (i.e. Project Based Learning Assignment) was an important precursor for the planned access opportunity, for it was the conceived product of this project that would serve as the guiding theme of the engineering concepts and processes to be addressed in our trip to the Hopkins bioengineering lab. I considered to project to be quite serious from an academic, intellectual, sociological, and familial perspective. As such, I saw fit to inform the parents of my students of its scope and significance. The accompanying artifact captures my communication with parents' concerning this project (left).

Preparatory PBL Presentation

Since global mitigation of famine was the central focus of the PBL assignment, affording my students sufficient background information about the basic factors driving famine (both biologically and sociologically), the underpinnings of these phenomena were important parts of their project preparation as well as vital content independently. The presentation shown left is one that I delivered to my students to this end. From our discussions surrounding this lecture, it was clear (and entirely understandable) that my students were not generally aware of the physiological roles of essential macro- and micro-nutrients and the critical parts they play in ensuring life and normal functioning from a biochemical vantage. This is important in at least two respects: (I) it is commonly perceived that starvation stems from a deficit in absolute energy intake (i.e. calories), whereas this is a comparatively small part of the peril of malnutrition and (II) it is not commonly appreciated that caloric restriction (without malnutrition, i.e. given minimally adequate essential nutrient provisionment) and protracted periods of energy deprivation (i.e. intermittent fasting) are manifestly productive of optimal health and lifespan extension in multiple animal models, including primates and humans. Any attempt to sytematically address starvation should ideally incorporate the previous interellated points. This was impressed upon my students (along with abundant empirical evidence from sound scientific studies appropriately interwoven into lessons) and it showed in their oral presentations on their respective nutritional products.

Preparatory Lessons in Nutrition

Since starvation and the alleviation thereof was the central focus of the PBL assignment, affording my students an understanding of the underpinnings of nutrition was an important part of their project preparation as well as vital content in its own right. The lesson shown left is one of several that served this purpose. My students were apprised of the very reason why animals eat, the role of energy in the body's physiology, the conceptual constitution of the calorie and the various parts played by certain essential nutrients in the body's functioning. As a consequence of such lessons as this, my students could think more competently and systematically about starvation and normal nutrition, opening a mental door to the purpose of the project.

Representative Student Work in Alimentary Anatomy

In order to understand the causes and consequences of nutritional deprivation, my students needed to understand normal nutrition--how energy and nutrients are extracted from food and assimilated by the body and the various organs involved in this complex yet crucial process. My students were introduced at this early stage in their education to the intricate operations of organs essential to the assimilation of nutrients--something that science curricula commonly reserve for high school or college yet is of vital importance in promoting prudent, preventative health behavior and affording insight into the serious social problem of global hunger.

The accompanying artifact, allegiant with the aforecited lesson, illustrates the rigorous work my students performed in preparation for their project, for the access opportunity and for furthering their knowledge of basic biological processes. In order to make use of the doors that such opportunites as the Hopkins trip may open, my students must be adequately informed and conditioned to work diligently. This artifact is a representative example of such work.

Agenda for Access Opportunity #1

The trip to the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering & Design was exciting from start to finish. My students were as eager to ask questions of the researchers as they were to offer answers. Moreover, the answers were articulated by the investigators with no trace of condescending oversimplification, which seemed to engender mutual respect. A very interesting introduction was provided, informing the students of the several projects that the lab was presently perusing. Thereafter, students were divided into teams to engineer ways of constructing zip-line cables to transport small parcels using simple materials. It was this aspect of the trip that was tied most closely to the classroom project in which my students had been engaged. It gave them a concrete, though simple, picture of the mechanics that would be involved in a scaled-up system for delivering nutritional supplies, one that could complement the use of aerial drones--another of the transport solutions considered by students. Discoursing with scientists who are actually engaged in such work is rare opportunity that may well open doors for my students.

Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Lab: Access to a Hands-On Experience

In conceiving this access opportunity I wanted to provide my students with a unique experience that would complement my curricular content while concomitantly connecting them to resources (human and technological) that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. The trip to Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Lab did just this. First my students were given a broad and highly interesting overview of all the ongoing operations of the lab and the research pursuits of their investigators and collaborators all over the globe. Then they were given a project (in accordance with my description of the Project Based Learning assignment that I made the lab staff aware of). This project prompted my students to construct a cable system that would transport a load of a given weight for a given distance without loss of contents upon coming to rest at the final destination. Simple materials were provided including magnets, wire, cables, cups, string, cup, wooden blocks/pegs, scales, and timers. My students were organized into several groups and this very organization was sufficient to stimulate a sense of healthy competition (which was admittedly reinforced by my promise of a reward for the successful, most innovative group(s)). My students operated quite independently and this autonomy (with only occasional interjections from investigators and myself concerning physical concepts such as friction and the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration). Their relative autonomy made their completion of the task all the more rewarding, demonstrating their ability to solve problems in thoughtful, practical ways. It is just this sort of hands on experience in the rudiments of science and engineering that STEM programs in under-resourced, predominantly Black urban schools lack and it is a deficit that deepens the technological, educational, and socio-economic divide that has always existed between the relatively affluent White community and the comparatively impoverished Black community. This access opportunity was aimed at diminishing this divide for a small group of African American middle school students whom I had the distinct privelge to teach.

Debriefing Discourse Following Access Opportunity #1

Upon our return from the Hopkins lab my students' excitement had barely abated. The several students who traveled in my truck continued their conversation from the field trip back to the campus. Despite being released for daily dismissal, they desired (uniformly) to continue their conversation. Though of an informal nature, the exchange was sufficiently substantive to warrant recording in my estimation. The accompanying abstract captures important elements of this conversation. It is clear from my students' responses to my questions that they were stimulated (presumably by this very access opportunity) to formulate realistic approaches to some of the engineering challenges that they might face in trying to bring their PBL projects to fruition. Such basic considerations of design constraints can serve as a conceptual conduit to the complex undertakings of an an operation such as Hopkins' bioengineering lab. This is precisely the sort of mind-opening, door-opening, transformative experience that I ideally envisioned this access opportunity to be.