CityLab Receives NIH Award to Increase Diversity in Biomedical Sciences Workforce & STEM

Boston University CityLab, a biotechnology learning laboratory for middle and high school teachers and their students, has received a five-year, $1.3 million Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the only new SEPA award made to a Massachusetts institution in 2022.

This will allow CityLab to develop, implement, and evaluate a new curriculum for high school students that explores genome editing and builds awareness of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in STEM, as well as emphasize their importance to the biomedical sciences.

A partnership between Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, CityLab was first funded by the NIH SEPA program in 1991 and is one of just a few programs continuously operating since. The new grant project, “Mystery of the Crooked Cell 2.0: CityLab’s Next Generation Socioscientific Approach to Gene Editing,” addresses the need for NIH’s pre-college activities to focus on biomedical workforce preparedness, especially for underrepresented minorities.

This project will expand CityLab’s “Mystery of the Crooked Cell” hands-on, inquiry-based curriculum supplement that focuses on the molecular basis of sickle cell disease by incorporating state-of-the-art gene editing content immersed with socioscientific reasoning (SSR). “This project will reach close to 600 local URM [Underrepresented Minority] students and, through planned web-based dissemination of the finished curriculum, will reach thousands of students,” explains coprincipal investigator Carl Franzblau, PhD, professor of biochemistry and CityLab founder.

According to coprincipal investigator Donald DeRosa, EdD, clinical associate professor and science education program director at Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, the “SSR approach places science content in a meaningful social context and motivates students to take ownership of their learning.” SSR skills include realizing the complexity of the content and context of an issue, analyzing an issue from multiple perspectives, seeking out sources of bias in data, and considering if and how scientific investigations can advance understanding of an issue.

“Genome editing is becoming part of the physician’s toolkit, so teaching young people about this important and rapidly advancing field will prepare them to be informed patients and, we hope, will position them to enter careers in the biomedical sciences or health professions,” says coprincipal investigator Carla Romney, ScD, CityLab director of research. ●