Community Outreach
Commitment to STEM Education
Dr. Ferrall-Fairbanks and the BEAT Cancer Lab are committed to engaging with STEM education early and was awarded from the Shepard Broad Foundation Community Outreach Fund in 2022 to support their Cancer Biology Bootcamp to bring middle school students from neighboring rural counties into the lab to learn about molecular biology tools used to answer open questions in cancer research.
Motivation
UF Health Cancer Center’s catchment area serves as variety communities that are classified as a rural county by the Rural Urban Continuum Codes classification system used by the USDA. Furthermore, some of these counties, including Bradford County, are characterized as a high social economic vulnerability (SEV) using “a census tract-based measure that uses poverty, unemployment, income, and education levels to designate areas of potential negative effects on communities caused by … stresses on human health”.
These areas have the highest rates of advanced stage cancer incidence, and the efforts proposed here aim to both educate these students on cancer but also help level the playing field for equitable access to these experimental experiences not traditionally available to rural students.
Bootcamp
The Cancer Biology Bootcamp is designed to introduce middle school students to tools used in molecular biology (micropipetting, electrophoresis, PCR) in Day 1 and their uses and applications in cancer (genetics, genotype to phenotype) in Day 2.
The graduate students in the BEAT Cancer Lab facilitate the event with guest lecture on biosafety from the HWCOE Directory of Safety. Lunches were provided for all attendees and informal surveys pre- and post- event were given to assess value added by attending the program.
