June 22, 2005 | In the 15 years that the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has provided professional development to schoolteachers it has never looked outside the state for assistance.

Until now.

Bob Burns, Ph.D., director of UAMS’ Partners in Health Sciences Program (PIHS), this summer brought in Montclair State University of New Jersey faculty with an epidemiology curriculum for science, math and health educators.

“This is a historic moment,” Burns told a class of about 60 Arkansas teachers. “This is our 15^th summer and we have never ever had guest lecturers outside UAMS.”

Mark Kaelin, Ed.D., and Wendy Huebner, Ph.D., both from the College of Education and Human Services at Montclair, led a two-day workshop in June called “Detectives in the Classroom” that introduced teachers to the idea of studying diseases at the population level rather than the cellular level -- that is, the lab is the community.

Their trip to Arkansas and class materials were paid for by a National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources – Science Education Partnership Award grant. Burns said he learned of the workshop during a NCRR grant review meeting in Washington, D.C., where he and Kaelin met. Kaelin told him he wanted to take the epidemiology program on the road.

“I said, ‘Well, come to Little Rock,’” Burns recalled.

Kaelin and Hueber followed their roughly hour-long general overview of epidemiology by using the class to demonstrate how the science works and how the teachers can, in turn, use their classes to do the same. For example, cards were handed to several class participants that indicated they were “sick.” The class had to analyze the sick group to determine what distinguished them from the rest of the class.

Kaelin said he hoped the teachers would leave the workshop with the tools and desire to make epidemiology part of their instruction.

Just two hours into the epidemiology class, Richard Emmel, a teacher at Robinson Middle School, as well as all other participating teachers already had a CD to take home that he expects will be useful with his students.

“We got wonderful handouts. Most of the time we get material that we can just take and use,” said the Pulaski County Special School District teacher, a regular participant in UAMS’ continuing education programs.

Emmel is not the only teacher to return to UAMS for professional development. More than half the teachers raised their hands when asked if they had attended previous PIHS  workshops at UAMS.

The Partners in Health Sciences Program packages its product so that teachers can fit it seamlessly into their curriculum, Burns said.

“The tool kits turn out to be a form of enduring material,” he said. “The teacher uses new content and the tool kit year after year after year so that the number of students in kindergarten through 12^th grade that we reach is not measurable.”

A 35-year teaching veteran, Emmel has taught math and science, and now teaches reading. “I have been able to use the material no matter what I teach. It usually fits in somehow,” he said.

Of most value to Emmel, he said, is the way he has been treated by UAMS.

“That’s, I think, No. 1,” he said. “You become like part of the family and you can call and ask questions. I’ve called Bob (Burns) several times. You have a good resource.”

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