Oklahoma State University department of Biochemistry
and Microbiology recently donated equipment valued at $10,000 to
Western’s science department.
The equipment, originally provided to OSU by Critical Thinking in
the Biological Sciences (CTBS), is funded by an Undergraduate
Education Grant awarded to Oklahoma State University by the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in 2002.
It includes gel electrophoresis boxes and power sources, a
microcentrifuge, micropipettes, and a thermal cycler.
The equipment has been borrowed the last few years by Elizabeth
Wallace, Principal Investigator for the Summer Science Academy in
Plant Biology and Genomics through a loaner “footlocker” program
sponsored by OSU.
Under one grant activity, a mobile or “footlocker” student
laboratory experiments is circulated among community college faculty
for classroom use. The footlocker labs allow community college
students to learn state of the art biomedical techniques such as DNA
fingerprinting and the polymerase chain reaction.
According to grant director Dr. Gary Thompson, Head of the
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at OSU, and Program
Coordinator Dr. Joanna Ledford, Teaching Associate in Biochemistry
and Molecular Biolgy, a principal goal of the grant is to enhance
critical thinking skills of undergraduate students in the biological
sciences at OSU and Oklahoma two-year colleges.
“The CTBS program will terminate in a few months. Ms. Wallace has
been such an enthusiastic user of the footlocker exercises, we felt
that donating this equipment to WOSC was an excellent way of
ensuring the instruments will continue to support HHMI’s and our
undergraduate education goals well beyond the life of the grant.”
