University of Texas-Pan American
Texas University Takes Lab to the Sagebrush

The University of Texas-Pan American is about as far south as you can get and still be in the United States. This rural area that hugs the Mexico border is growing fast, but towns are far apart, and many of the school districts have little money.

This makes it almost impossible for the university to bring the local community in to meet scientists in their labs. So the Edinburg, Texas, university is using part of its $1.2 million HHMI grant to take its research expertise on the road in an attempt to get middle school students excited about science. "Many of the schools are far away and poor and couldn't afford to get their students to our campus for outreach programs, so we take the campus to them," said Hassan Ahmad, the college's HHMI program director.

To take the campus to the people, the university has converted a 40-foot bus into a mobile lab. After pre-lab classes to give the sixth through ninth graders background on what they will do, the students suit up in white coats and goggles and perform experiments at one of 22 lab stations. All the projects apply to the real world: screening a patient for sickle cell anemia using the real gel tests used to diagnose the disease; testing hypothetical patients for HIV infections using real virus detection assays; performing DNA analyses on simulated crime scenes; and looking at their own DNA under a microscope. "We got the money for the bus from our 2004 HHMI grant, but it took us two years to get everything ready," said Ahmad, who is chair of the university's chemistry department. "Since 2006 we've worked with 9,275 students and 196 teachers at 87 schools."

The purpose of the bus is to rev up the kids' passion for science, but Ahmad and his colleagues know if their project is to succeed, the excitement needs to be sustained long after the bus pulls away. So he has a backup plan: Although it is impossible to give local teachers enough training in the two days they are on site, UT-Pan American is also using some of its new HHMI funds to start a teacher training program. The summer program will bring six educators to campus every year for eight weeks to work on a research project they develop with a faculty mentor. The teachers will also create lessons and exercises they can take back to their classrooms.

"We love the new culture of research HHMI has helped us create on our campus, but some of us would rather sneak away on the bus and ride the range, waving microscopes instead of branding irons," Ahmad said. "It's so much more fun!"