• Base Pair students have participated actively in contemporary, graduate level biomedical research during the high school academic year. Academic credit towards high school graduation has been given for that participation. A significant fraction of participating students have produced sufficient experimental data to generate a formal presentation in a professional scientific forum. A total of 21 scientific presentations/publications have been given or co-authored by a Base Pair student. In addition, each participating student has had an in-depth, practical introduction to career in academic biomedical research.
• Teachers in the Base Pair Summer Research Institute have experienced a rigorous, 6-week, mentorship-based tutorial in contemporary biomedical research, that emphasized training in cell and molecular biology. The primary intent of the tutorial was to instill a knowledge and skill foundation that will permit science teachers to utilize aspects of the training in enhancement of the courses that they normally teach during the academic year. Specifically, the tutorial prepares teachers to use several laboratory exercise kits (the Biotechnology Explorer series from Bio-Rad Corporation, that was designed by a consortium of educators and biotechnology scientists for use in high school and undergraduate laboratory courses). In addition, the tutorial focused on issues including grant-writing (all four participating teachers prepared, submitted and obtained external funding for individual teacher-initiated mini-grants), research ethics, curriculum development, inquiry-based learning using contemporary electronic information technology and access of remote biomedical data-bases, and use of multi-media and non-traditional sources for enhancement of student learning in the sciences. During the grant period, a total of eight teacher formal scientific presentations have been prepared, delivered and/or co-authored by a Base Pair teacher.
• Curriculum development activities in the Base Pair program have resulted in the adoption, by the Mississippi Department of Education, of a unique, inquiry-based science course, called Introduction to Biomedical Research. That course is eligible for use by any public high school in the state, although it is currently offered only within the Jackson Public School District. In addition, Base Pair-trained teachers have redesigned lesson plans for 2 other courses, Environmental Sciences and Molecular Biology. Finally, a complete lesson plan for a novel developmental course, entitled Biotechnology and Science, has been prepared and submitted to the Mississippi Department of Education as a new course in the humanities framework. If adopted, the course would address the sociological and societal impact of contemporary developments in biotechnology and biomedical research. It would also offer a forum to teach elementary, yet fundamental and contemporary, aspects of science in an interdisciplinary fashion from a non-traditional humanities perspective. The course is designed to be inquiry-based and encompass the use of information technology to access novel bodies of learning material. Importantly, if implemented according to plan, it would permit teachers from three separate high school disciplines (sciences, computer training and the humanities) to cross over traditional disciplinary teaching lines and join forces to cross-train students. The course is awaiting approval.

• The greatest challenge during this program year was the trial initiation of an expanded summer professional development program for teachers. It was difficult in that funding for the expansion had not yet been approved and, consequently, alternative funding sources had to be found. These were cultivated successfully, however, and the summer program expansion (which is now fully funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) has a proven syllabus upon which to grow and develop.
• Evaluation of the effectiveness of the expanded Base Pair summer teacher program required preparation of multiple measures of outcome. This was accomplished by requiring teachers to write 1) a fully developed mini-grant proposal and 2) a hazard plan for their high school laboratory. In addition, teachers were evaluated by taking part in Myers-Briggs personality type profiling and through written and oral evaluations with the program director. All four teachers in the program submiited a grant proposal and all four were funded for the 1999-2000 academic year by a Jackson Metro area educational philanthropic organization, The Greater Jackson Foundation. That foundation subsequently and independently followed the progress of each of the four awards and featured one of those on a cover of their newsletter. The outcome of the hazard plan summaries was less positive and further work will need to be done to fully implement the value of that aspect of the program. Clearly, it is very difficult for a single teacher to affect laboratory procedure in schools where multiple teachers use laboratory facilities. Plans are in place to attempt to improve compliance with this component during the coming summer.

• The Base Pair program has adopted the use of the Biotechnology Explorer laboratory exercise kits, both as a training resourse for teachers and as a classroom aid. These kits, which are low-cost, readily available and extremely well documented, have proven to be very adaptable to high school use.
• The Base Pair web site (http://mishin.umsmed.edu/basepair) details the progress of the program and begins to offer a service, called "Scoping the Sciences" that assists students in following an information pathway for a number of areas of potential interest related to biomedical research. Students, teachers, professional librarians and biomedical researchers contribute to the development and posting of these topics.

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