ASHG Receives $1.1 Million NSF Grant

A network of 92 master Geneticist–Educator alliances, each made up of a geneticist and a local high school teacher (for 184 total participants), will be developed during the 3 years of the GENA Project. These alliances will serve to train leaders in their own school districts in subsequent years. Detailed teaching strategies will be disseminated nationally through current Math and Science Partnerships and a publicly accessible Web site sponsored by ASHG and GSA (http://www.genednet.org). Geneticists will interact with a local high school teacher for a period of 1 year. During that year, the alliances will attend a two-and-a-half–day workshop (for which they will receive a small stipend) and will develop and implement innovative teaching programs in genetics education. Along with GENA professional staff, STEM faculty mentors will develop and coauthor publications and presentations at national meetings of all the societies involved. At the conclusion of this work, the data will be evaluated, and a model program, adaptable by any disciplinary scientific society, will be presented through publications and semiannual meetings of education leaders from science and mathematics societies. The GENA Project and training will become an integral part of the strategic development plan for the educational efforts of ASHG and GSA, thus making K–12 education outreach a truly integral aspect of society activities.The work completed during the three years of the GENA project will:1. Create a sustainable infrastructure of pedagogical and content-specific support that scientists can use to develop meaningful scholarly interactions with local K-12 teachers and students,2. Increase respect for the efforts of scientists to perform outreach through a series of scholarly publications, written by scientist-mentors in the GENA Project, to be submitted and published in scientific journals,3. Develop a model of professional development for scientists, adaptable to other disciplines, that will be presented at the annual meetings and newsletters of all four societies involved in the GENA Project,4. Provide and maintain a forum for geneticists and teachers to communicate throughout the lifetime of this project and beyond, through an ASHG-/GSA-supported listserv dedicated to the GENA Project,5. Develop a set of lesson plans and case studies that will be made publicly available so that any interested teachers or scientists across the country can access the materials and implement them in the classroom, expanding exponentially the impact of the GENA Project,6. Promote K–12 outreach by scientists through presentation of GENA Project–related monographs, editorials, and data on a dedicated page of the http://www.genednet.org Web site (the education Web site of both ASHG and GSA), and7. Create a mechanism for scientists engaged in the efforts of the GENA Project to receive letters of support for their career-development portfolio from members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Vice President of ASHG.ASHG is currently looking for members of ASHG or GSA who would be interested in being active members of the GENA Project for at least 1 year between 2007 and 2009. To gauge the impact that this program has on the institutional policies at institutes of higher education, participating geneticists must be at a tenure-granting institution and must be a faculty member in a science department. If you are interested in applying to be a part of the GENA Project or in learning more about what involvement will entail, please do not hesitate to contact the Education Office at ASHG or to go online (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=332912664353) to apply.We look forward to working with you.