The experience of college-level scientific research has arrived at St. Margaret’s.

St. Margaret’s recently welcomed 10 juniors and seniors into the new research methods in life sciences class in the Upper School. The course, taught by Jennifer Ross-Viola, is designed to present students a unique opportunity to experience the challenge and rewards of collegiate scientific research while still in high school.

“I signed up because of my interest in life sciences, and the fact that research is an important part of studying life sciences in college,” said junior Mitra Alikhani. “This class will help give me a leg up if I want to participate in research opportunities in college.”

Dr. Ross-Viola spent the first day of the semester explaining the skills she planned to teach: writing scientific research papers in the correct style, learning to use databases, and understanding proper citation methods. Yet she also asked the students: what do you want to learn?

The answers varied from better understanding Excel as a research tool to learning how to interpret statistics in scientific papers. It will all be touched on this semester.

The idea for the class came from former St. Margaret’s students who are STEM majors in college. The science faculty periodically meets with Tartan alumni to ask questions about how well St. Margaret’s prepared them for the next step, asking questions like: What’s been easy for you in college? What have you struggled with? What surprised you?

 

“One of the things we heard from students,” said Dr. Ross-Viola, the science department chair, “was that they felt great about writing, felt ready to go as far as level of challenge in the classes. But they didn’t feel they had an advantage when it came to the research aspect.”

Those research skills will be taught in the new class through case studies. The first unit dealt with acoustic neuroma tumors and their tie to mobile phone use. Students read media reports that cited a scientific study, then read the scientific study first-hand to further break down the findings. This involved understanding terminology like odds ratio and confidence interval.

To bring a wet-lab research component into the class, the students stained cells to get a microscopic look at the difference between regular cells and cancerous cells, and then took those observations along with the use of databases to create a research paper.

The equipment for the wet labs, similar to what science majors use at the college level, was purchased through the generosity of a PTF grant. In addition, Dr. Ross-Viola has worked closely with Library Media teacher Stacey Von Winckelmann to introduce students to the best research resources for the course.

Dr. Ross-Viola said the scientific research and writing skills will have students more ready for their future studies beyond St. Margaret’s.

“I want to prepare students for college-level life science classes,” Dr. Ross-Viola said. “But hopefully the skills they are learning can be transferrable even if the students are not a life sciences major.”