SENCER from a Student's Perspective

Shanna Dell, SENCER Summer Intern

This piece is the third in our Student's Perspective series, related by SENCER summer intern and recent Beloit College graduate Shanna Dell. While at Beloit, Shanna enrolled in several SENCER courses. This summer series features her thoughts on course experiences.

Flashback to fall 2009: numerous news outlets are publishing daily stories about the H1N1 virus, Purell becomes a common addition to purses/backpacks/brief cases, the search for a vaccine is followed with rapt attention. In Wisconsin, the biggest news item, besides Brett Favre playing for the Minnesota Vikings, is that UW Madison is being hit hard by the flu and may have to cancel events and classes. At Beloit College, you cannot walk anywhere without seeing a large bottle of hand sanitizer, fliers about washing your hands and how to cough into your arm deck the buildings, everyone knows at least one person who has spent time in the flu isolation spaces, and our inboxes are full with updates from the Beloit College H1N1 Task Force.

It was in this atmosphere that I started my final year at Beloit College. In addition to taking classes, I was also TAing for Microbiology, one of the introductory biology courses. Though the students in this class were learning the same content as Micro students at Beloit College have since I arrived on campus, most activities and discussion were focused around H1N1. The class discussed the virology and genetics of the virus, among other things, and compared and contrasted it to other flu epidemics. The class also had many discussions on what could be done on campus to promote practices that would limit the spread of the flu and how to encourage people to get the seasonal flu vaccine and, later, the H1N1 vaccine offered on campus. It was not uncommon during this semester for the professor, Marion Fass, to come into class and put up the current H1N1 statistics from the CDC or present an article from the newspaper discussing how different countries were dealing with the epidemic. Towards the end of the semester, students in the class held a poster presentation in the atrium of the Science Center. Posters were about different aspects of the virus, subjects ranged from more public health focused ones, such as what the college's plan was for the epidemic and when to except a vaccine, to more hard science topics such as explaining the genetic evolution of H1N1 and describing why this flu was biologically different than other flues.

The class was a mixture of students in or intending to enter a STEM discipline, non-STEM majors, and students who did not yet know what their academic focus would be. By focusing on an issue that was current, relevant, and had many different angles, the entire class could personalize it and use the issue to better help them understand microbiology. The use of current statistics, popular news items, and campus sources augmented the text book and reinforced the other information they were learning. In addition, this real world situation promoted discussion outside of class with peers who did not know as much about H1N1, allowing members of the class to educate their non-microbiology taking friends and also reinforcing their learning. In general, I think that focusing on a current and relevant issue greatly increased students understanding and stimulated interest in the subject, whether they were STEM majors or not.