Juanita Sanchez students participate in biotech activities at URI

JUANITA SANCHEZ High School junior Perla Castillo, right, provides guidance to classmates Sorielisa De La Cruz and Yasiry Munoz during a recent biotechnology workshop at the University of Rhode Island Providence Biotechnology Center.
JUANITA SANCHEZ High School junior Perla Castillo, right, provides guidance to classmates Sorielisa De La Cruz and Yasiry Munoz during a recent biotechnology workshop at the University of Rhode Island Providence Biotechnology Center.

PROVIDENCE – Juanita Sanchez High School students participated in hands-on activities through the Amgen Biotechnology Experience at the University of Rhode Island’s Providence Biotechnology Center last week.
URI biotechnology professors and Amgen representatives were on hand at the May 8 event. Four students were trained to lead the program, which featured a laboratory exercise with E. coli, for their fellow students.
One Juanita Sanchez student, junior Perla Castillo, explained the process students had to follow to conduct the laboratory experiment.
“It’s fun to be the teacher and teach my classmates,” Castillo said. “I like the feeling of knowing stuff first and then teaching it to them.”
Castillo and classmates Alex Gomez, Caroline Holguin and Ivania Sarit received extra training at URI under David Vito, who coordinates the program and prepared the students to deliver the lesson.
Amgen recently renewed funding for URI to offer the program, which features a three-week curriculum, through 2017. The program was launched in 2007, and since then the company has provided $800,000 to the university, allowing more than 4,000 students from 40 schools in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to participate.
More than 50 high school science teachers, including Sanchez’s Benjamin Gormley, have been trained to deliver the lessons, using one of five teaching kits that includes $25,000 worth of laboratory equipment.
Said Jennifer Bianco, senior manager of global communications at Amgen, “It was inspiring to watch the students conducting hands-on science experiments with their peers. There was great energy and passion in their interaction and presentations, as well as a sense of pride in understanding the science, and being able to share the excitement of scientific discovery with others – which is exactly what we hope to accomplish through the Amgen Biotech Experience.”
Greg Paquette, director of biotechnology and medical laboratory programs in the URI Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, said the university has been committed to assisting the growth of the biotechnology industry in Rhode Island for the last decade.
“We quickly realized, though, that it was crucial to start getting students interested in biotechnology in middle and high school, so the Amgen program has helped us do that,” he said. “And it’s satisfying to see that we’ve already had a number of students who started with the Amgen program, enrolled in our undergraduate Biotechnology Manufacturing Program, and have been hired by local biotech companies.
“All of these efforts are an important part of workforce development and economic development in Rhode Island,” he added.

No posts to display