2023 FACULTY INNOVATION AWARDS

Our Faculty Innovation Grants are funded by the Kirwan Smith Family and the Faculty Compensation and Teaching Excellence Fund and are awarded to faculty members based upon the ability to create a proposal for a teaching experience that transcends the normal school curriculum. These grants offer $6,000 for classroom materials and $6,000 stipends to compensate for planning time for curriculum development. “The ideas we received this year were strong, and we thank everyone who took the time to put together proposals over the summer,” said Director of Development Elizabeth Smith P ’17. “We are grateful for our donors’ support as these grants allow us to pilot new ideas for our students across the entire School.” ■

MiniOne PCR/Gel Electrophoresis Systems

Cecelia Pan P ’16, Science Department Chair

This grant funds a MiniOne BioScience Classroom Kit that offers students a more hands-on approach and enhances the Upper School science experience in courses where biotechnology protocols and information are part of the curriculum, including Biology, AP Biology, and Biotechnology. These mini-kits contain both PCR and electrophoresis systems for teaching biotechnology labs in the classroom, allowing all students in a class to be involved in labs instead of being observers.

Equipment that allows all students to directly participate can greatly improve the class experience for everyone, says Science Department Chair Cecelia Pan P ’16. “For example, Grade 9 Biology will use this equipment to do a simple gel electrophoresis where the DNA is precut,” Pan explains. “This lab investigates DNA fingerprinting and can now be done in small groups instead of as a demonstration. There will be enough gel electrophoresis apparatus where the students in AP Biology and Biotechnology can work individually or in groups of two.”

The Spellbinding Power of Bookbinding

Will Arndt, Middle School English Christie DeNizio, Middle and Upper School Art

“In our increasingly digital age, there is a sense of urgency to keep pace with innovations and technology. The reasons for doing so are understandable. We hope as educators to prepare students for an unknown future, to provide them the essential skills they will need to succeed, and to minimize waste as ethical environmental citizens of the world,” says Middle School English Teacher Will Arndt. “However, I still love books—physical, tangible books,” he says. “Many studies have concluded that readers absorb more information when reading a physical rather than a digital text. The endeavor of this project is to go beyond merely retaining information more effectively to fully appreciating how information is retained.”

Together with Middle & Upper School Art Teacher Christie DeNizio, Arndt plans to offer bookbinding as a capstone interdisciplinary project for Grade 7 English and Art. To prepare them both for teaching the course, they attended a workshop over the summer at MassArt called Handmade Books, and they secured field trip opportunities with archivists and art departments at Boston College and Harvard University for students to visit their manuscript archives and rare book collections. Brimmer students will create hardcover notebooks in the fall and spend the rest of the school year filling the pages. “Just like Da Vinci’s notebooks and Darwin’s journals, these texts will become tangible chronicles of learning,” they note.