Fralin Life Science Institute

Biotech-in-a-Box

During the 2007-2008 school year, Biotech-in-a-Box served over fifteen thousand students at eighty-six Virginia schools in thirty-six counties and ten independent cities. The program, now in its fifteenth year, continues to offer five different kits: DNA Biotechnology, Column Chromatography, Protein Electrophoresis, Introduction to Immunology, and Thermal Cyclers for PCR experiments.

In 2008, the Biotech-in-a-Box program received a grant from VCATS, the Virginia Council on Advanced Technology Skills. The grant award is $20,000 a year for two years. VCATS is also known as the Virginia Bio/Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Project and was established by the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) and the Virginia Biotechnology Association (VA Bio) as a new workforce development project. This project will establish solutions to the upcoming shortage of advanced manufacturing workers in Virginia.

• Biotech-in-a-Box Equipment Loan Program

Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP)

The Fralin outreach program for high schools and community colleges began in 1994 by gathering a group of Virginia high school teachers and asking them what they needed from us to successfully enter the molecular biology age. Now a centerpiece of the Fralin Outreach Program, the Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP) is a program developed by Dr. Erin Dolan in collaboration with an Arizona high school teacher and a University of Arizona faculty member. Under the leadership of Dr. Dolan, originally hired by the Fralin Center and now a Department of Biochemistry faculty member, the program has grown and transformed in intervening years to become a nationally recognized model. PREP brings together biology teachers and research scientists to guide high school students in investigating gene function in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. National dissemination of PREP was initiated in 2006-2007 and involves partnerships with the Danforth Plant Sciences Center (St. Louis, MO), Iowa State University, University of Colorado at Denver, and University of Wisconsin at Madison and in the future Cornell University and University of Missouri at Columbia.

Biotechnology Education Conference 2007

The 11th Biotechnology Education Conference at Virginia Tech was held in July 2007. This year's conference focused on vector-borne infectious diseases and attracted a eighty-one national and international audience of high school and college biology educators to learn about cutting-edge research and teaching in medical, agricultural, environmental, and informatic biotechnologies.