Yet another Bio-Link blog post. The San Francisco bay area has experienced phenomenal growth in both the number of biotech companies and the need to find employees. But, no matter how many attractions entice potential employees to move to the Bay Area, they still face the problem of finding a place to live. Housing prices are, well, a bit startling to anyone from just about any other part of the country. This presents a dilemma for local companies. If there aren't enough trained people nearby, and you can't get people from elsewhere, what do you do? The City College of San Francisco may…
Science Blogs has asked: What makes a good science teacher? Many of the science teachers that I've met can't really be described by the adjective "good." The better fitting words are: great, marvelous, inspiring, and fantastic. But, SBer's want to know, "what makes them so great?" Right? I've compiled a list of characteristics that I've seen all great science teachers share. And, since this group rarely gets sufficiently rewarded beyond seeing themselves in the annual edition of the Bio-Rad Explorer catalog, I'm even going to name names and give examples. What characteristics do…
I recently completed a long trip out-of-town, giving a presentation at a Bio-Link conference in Berkeley, and teaching a couple of bioinformatics classes at the University of Texas, through the National Science Foundation's Chautauqua program. The Human Subjects Protection Course Before I left town, I had to take a class on how to treat human subjects. It seems strange, in some ways, to be doing this now, several years after completing graduate school, but my experimental subjects have generally been plants, protozoans, and bacteria; with a few rabbits, rats, and mice thrown in as antibody…
Blogging from Bio-Link, part III High school teachers have different techniques for selling their students on the benefits of science and math. When some high school instructors step in front of a class, the quiet demeanor gets put away and another persona steps out - the USED-CAR SALESMAN SCIENCE EVANGELIST. Science is no longer "science," when these instructors head up the class, it's SCIENCE, in all capital letters! Other teachers choose the haughty law professor, from "The Paper Chase," as a role model, even though a post-law student friend of mine thought it should be banned from…
Blogging from Bio-Link, part I I am currently in Berkeley attending the 2006 Bio-Link summer fellows' workshop. It's hard to believe that it's been eight years since the first workshop was held. We're still meeting here in the same lovely Clark Kerr Center and I'm still, as every year, awed by the amount of initiative and drive that I see in the group of people that converge on this place from around the country. Who would have thought that biotechnology education could inspire this kind of odd combination of family reunion and revival meeting? Why would anyone hire your graduates? When I…