This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing theresources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject andinvestigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source,and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed isfor the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator.Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), along with Redlands College and Comanche Nation College, and now Tulsa Community College have formed an outreach core in the INBRE project in order to promote student success among freshmen and sophomores in formative science courses at community colleges. Community colleges educate very large percentages of students enrolled in introductory science courses and students from underrepresented groups are more likely to start at a community college. Community college students are linked to biomedical research programs and career paths directly through summer research internships and new science programming (bioinformatics). Indirectly students benefit from the updating of community college science faculty through summer externships, workshops, and conferences as well as from closer ties to the research universities of Oklahoma. Oklahoma City Community College has a new Ph.D as director and faculty for the new bioinformatics program. The grant provides equipment to support and enhance instructional laboratory experimentation. A special course to prepare the summer interns for laboratory work was designed, and it was implemented in May before the start of the internship: Introduction to Life Sciences Laboratory Techniques. We call it the Lab Boot Camp and teach basics of lab safety, scientific integrity, calculating and making solutions, making media, aseptic technique, keeping a laboratory notebook, use of balances, centrifuges, micropipettors, pH meters, spectrophotometers, electrophoresis equipment, gel documentation imaging, chromatography, BLAST searches, and more. The Lab Boot Camp could be a model for other programs that bring undergraduates into a biomedical research lab for the summer. INBRE funding also provides science programming for the annual state community college educators' conference.
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