Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers

The Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT), annually held on Cornell campus, was created to support high school biology teachers by giving them an environment to join with other teachers and learn about new lab techniques and advances in biology. The mission of the institute is that the teachers will bring what they learned back into their classrooms to continue inspiring their students. We aided CIBT by giving a presentation about our past and present projects, explaining what synthetic biology is and how it can be used in our society. We also showed the teachers our lab space and showed them where we performed each part of certain reactions.

As interested as our audience was in our current work, they found our high school experiences more relevant. Each of our members comes from a different high school, ranging from large to small, well-funded to under-funded, public to private, etc. Our hope is that after our presentation, the high school teachers left with the belief that no matter the circumstances hard work, dedication, and support can get a student anywhere they desire. It is our goal too that young students are inspired to work hard towards biological sciences.