Biological Sciences (61) The Multidisciplinary/Intercollegiate Collaborative Experience Using a Recombinant Yeast Assay to Quantify Estrogenic Compounds in Wastewater project is adapting a research model into a replicable instructional module and testing that module in three courses at three institutions. The schools participating include DeSales University, a private comprehensive university, Lafayette College, a selective baccalaureate institution, and Lehigh Carbon Community College, a public, two-year community college. The instructional module focuses on the emerging national and global environmental problem of increasing levels of estrogen in wastewater. It is an adaptation of a research technique using a recombinant strain of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a test for estrogenic chemicals that was originally developed by Drs. Tom Wiese and Charles Miller at the Tulane-Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research. The module is being introduced concurrently into an environmental science course at DeSales University, a general biology course at Lehigh Carbon Community College, and an environmental engineering course at Lafayette College. The goal of the project is to improve student learning in the sciences by exposing diverse students to basic research in a collaborative, multidisciplinary, and intercollegiate learning experience. The impact of the module on student achievement and its efficacy for replication in a variety of science education settings is being assessed.
