Montana Tech
Bringing Research Into The Classroom, Phage Discovery by Citizen Scientists
With relatively simple equipment and tools, K-12 students can discover previously unknown phages and increase our understanding of the biological world. The Bringing Research Into the Classroom (BRIC) project based at Montana Tech in Butte, MT has been providing research experiences for Montana teachers and students since 2012. To date, BRIC has provided phage discovery to more than 8,000 students including some of Montana’s most remote communities. The BRIC project offers two years of intensive professional development for the 28 participating teachers and four years of 3-day in-class visits for their students. BRIC teachers engage in authentic research experiences and prepare manuscripts summarizing their findings. Teachers’ personal research experiences inform their mentoring of K-12 student research projects. These two arms of outreach increase the number and diversity of Montanans patcipating in biomedial research and help to the fill the pipeline of students interested in STEM courses and careers.
