EDUCATION FORUM

Nong Dang, a Leeward Community College and University of Hawaii at Manoa undergraduate student, presented his research poster on the identification of expressed sequence tags in breadfruit, an important staple crop in Hawaii.
Susan Miyasaka presented her poster on informing middle and high school teachers about plant biotechnology through the presentation of a two-week summer Plant Biotechnology Workshop taught by instructors from the University of Hawaii, Manoa and Kamehameha Schools.
Kabi Neupane presented his poster on training community college faculty and students through participation in a three-week “Advances in Biosciences Education” (ABE) summer workshop taught in 2005–2007 by instructors from the Leeward Community College and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Plant Biology 2009
Education Posters: Local Research, Far-Reaching Impact

The importance of the scholarship of teaching and learning in the context of quality bench science was supported by the variety of education posters submitted for Plant Biology 2009. Three Hawaii-based researchers, Kabi Neupane, Susan Miyasaka, and Nong Dang, submitted posters about the dynamic work they are doing in various institutions in the state. Local projects such as these are models for how to create widespread positive impact in both the field of plant biology and in the education of plant scientists.

Undergraduate Researcher Investigates Important Hawaiian Staple Crop
Making the move from a community college to a four-year university can sometimes be a daunting transition. However, some students make a smooth transition thanks to astute and motivating mentoring. Nong Dang was comentored by Kabi Neupane, of Leeward Community College (LCC), and Robert Paull, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), on a project to investigate the transcriptome of breadfruit, an important staple crop tree that produces abundant, tasty, and nutritious fruits used for food, feed, medicine, and construction materials. This research will provide a valuable resource for future studies examining the fruit quality traits of breadfruit. Following his yearlong involvement in the research project, this second-year LCC student continued working on his research and now attends UHM. His undergraduate research project was funded by an NIH IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) grant #P20 RR016467 awarded to Dr. Lon White.

Middle and High School Teacher Outreach in Hawaii
The sustainability of Hawaiian agriculture might be aided by the development of improved resistance to insect pests and microbial diseases. However, recent legislation passed by the County of Hawaii, designed to protect the local taro and coffee industries, makes it unlawful for any person to test, propagate, cultivate, raise, plant, grow, introduce, or release genetically engineered taro or coffee. To better inform and train middle and high school teachers about the issues surrounding local genetically engineered crops, Susan Miyasaka, Ania Wieczorek, Mike Shintaku, Rusty Perry, and Tracie Matsumoto presented an agricultural biotechnology workshop in June 2009. This dedicated team presented a two-week workshop that included basic, hands-on laboratory techniques in molecular cloning and detection of marker genes and field trips to a local papaya farm and packing plant, the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center (PBARC), and the Kamehameha Schools Hawaii campus. Their goal was to allow teachers to become better informed about issues surrounding genetic engineering so their students gain a scientific understanding of perceived risks of genetic engineering versus agricultural challenges such as the epidemic of papaya viral ringspot disease. The workshop was funded by the USDA-CSRRES through the University of Hawaii’s Agribusiness Education, Training, and Incubator Program under the Alaska Native-Serving and Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions Education Grants Program.

Hands-on Biosciences Training at Community Colleges in Hawaii
Many laboratory courses taught at community colleges in Hawaii are structured around traditional “cookbook”-style experiences with predictable outcomes. Also, these small colleges have decreased access to sophisticated laboratory equipment and state-of-the-art methods. To bridge the technology gap and enhance the learning experiences of community college faculty and students, Kabi Neupane and David Christopher, from Leeward Community College (LCC) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), developed and presented a three-week Advances in Biosciences Education (ABE) workshop during the summers of 2005–2007. The workshops included hands-on laboratory methods such as basic molecular biology techniques in nucleic acid and protein analysis, immunoblotting, T-DNA mapping, fluorescence and electron microscopy, and bioinformatics. Community college faculty and students worked as teams on research problems, which enhanced mentoring and learning outcomes. Graduate students, postdoctoral associates, and faculty also gave lectures. Nearly 80% of workshop participants continued their education and transferred to undergraduate degrees at UHM or other four-year institutions. Faculty participants adapted procedures and lecture materials from the workshop into their courses during the semester. Following their participation in the summer workshop, several LCC students, including Jamie Lum and Christine Messa-Oh, continued working on research projects year-round on the isolation of senescence-related genes from the Anthurium transcriptome. Other long-term projects included orchid DNA fingerprinting, microbial ecology, pineapple protease characterization, and monoclonal antibody production. These outreach workshops were funded by an NSF grant (MCB03-48028) awarded to Dr. Christopher.