Erin Kassebaum

I Make Science

As a freshman, I remember seeing posts about a new lab, and seeing pictures of people in lab coats, and I began to wonder what the school was creating. I would wander the halls during the school day and pass by what looked like a normal classroom under renovation, but turns out that it was much more than that. By the end of my freshman year, a brand-new $250,000 biotechnology lab had been built. Complete with a spectrophotometer, an autoclave, a fume hood, along with multiple incubators, orbital shakers, hot plates, water baths, and analytical scales. Not to mention the closet full of chemicals, glassware, and any other materials we may need for a lab at any given moment. It was a scientist’s playground; and us under-qualified high schoolers got to actually use it, and be immersed in it.

The biotechnology program at my school had a biology pre-requisite, a 3.5 GPA requirement, as well as a two-year commitment to the class. The two years are cumulative for a lab-certification exam where students are given the chance to become certified bio-technicians. This certification gives us the opportunity to work in a lab setting for money and helps get a leg up in college undergraduate research opportunities. In many cases, people from my high school who have been certified try to go on to college to utilize their skills. But, this certification is still highly under-appreciated among professors because they just don’t understand the range of information and skills that we have . In a large amount of cases, biotechnology graduates will have to convince and explain to professors just how valuable our skills really are. Some of the skills that we have learned over the years includes making agar, pouring plates, streaking plates, incubating and growing bacteria, spooling DNA, extracting DNA, and reproducing DNA in a different host cell. These are all skills that I, nor anyone in my class, would have been able to do without the help of the lab, biotech program, and lab certification process. A lot of the times, people don’t learn these things until they are in college or grad school and immersed into a lab-related atmosphere. Professors and colleges have yet to realize how advanced we are in the lab, and how useful we can actually be to them and their research.

What I loved most about this class was that it was not lecture-oriented, it was very much lab-based and hands-on material. We started our day by grabbing our lab coats and finding a seat in groups of four for our lab groups. We would then proceed to analyze what part of the lab needs to be accomplished that day and then get to work. A lot of the time we would split the tasks up among group members to streamline the process. These tasks usually involved making calculations, measuring a substance, or mixing a solution. Once we all completed our small task we would then come together to add our solutions together, make measurements and compare data. The cool thing about when we performed our labs is that it was completely student-run. Our teacher would only tell us our task for the day and maybe explain a part of the lab at the beginning of class and then we were on our own. It’s a great way to explore the realm of leadership and team-building.

I had a very great experience with the teacher of this class. He was the one who started this program from the beginning and has had extreme success within the program. He’s the kind of teacher who encourages success in the best way. As I said before, it is difficult to get people to realize exactly what we are capable of. When a certified graduate of the program gets involved with research, therefore using the skills that he taught us, they would get their name and school where they performed research put on a plaque on the wall. He would continue to remind us that the plaques weren’t there to show how much better these people were over us, it was there to show us how feasible it can be to use our skills in higher education. He encourages us that he wants to fill the whole room with names to show just how beneficial the program really is. I think that this is a great way to motivate people to continue their knowledge into higher education. I know I’m striving towards getting my name on the wall as well, Erin Kassebaum: Florida State University. It would not only be a big personal accomplishment because I am getting into undergraduate research, I would also be the first from FSU. This is significant because my teacher is a HUGE Florida State fan, and I know that there would be a big sense of pride in the both of us to see Florida State finally on the wall. Every Friday during football season he would have us guess the scores of the upcoming game and whoever got the closest guess would get extra credit at the end of the semester. It’s really important to have a teacher who is so fun, supportive, and invested in our futures, and who truly encourages us to take what we know as far as we can. I know that he is one of the main reasons that I am so excited to take my certification to the next level.

Another cool perk to being in the program is the exclusive biotech shirt that we can buy. There are t-shirts that have the biotechnology logo on them as well as our slogan #wemakescience. The t-shirts were a fun way to show off the we were in this awesome program. This shirt was a way of bonding the classes together. There’s the first years in biotech 1 and the second years in biotech 2 and they all wear the same shirt. It’s a sense of pride to wear because not anyone can get into this class and be able to do what we’re doing. We wore it as a symbol of our club and our community, and I love that our slogan is so simple and relatable. It isn’t some inside joke or complicated science thing that no one would understand. It’s a hashtag; something that most millennials know about. These shirts and our slogan are such a fun and creative way of unifying the classes to relate and talk about one thing; making science.