Fall 2008—Though many schools may take a break in summer, the Dana Alliance’s Lending Library program remains popular year-round. Professors, post-docs, and public-school teachers used the Library’s models of the brain and neurons, posters, pamphlets, and other materials this past summer to teach students about the brain and how science works.

In Atlanta, the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and Georgia State University run annual programs in the summer for students and teachers. “Brain Camp 2008” included 31 students ages 11 to 14, who spent an active week dissecting sheep brains and cow, pig, and sheep eyes; testing their balance and reflexes; and building the brain of an imaginary vertebrate, among other things. They enjoyed all the activities, though the eye dissections had the highest “squeamish” factor, according to the camp’s director, Laura Carruth. In addition to library materials, the Alliance also covered the costs to provide the supplies for dissection.

For high-school students, the Center runs a two-month summer workshop. Students spend three weeks in classroom-style learning, then five weeks working in a neuroscience lab with a researcher. This program was supported with a grant from the Dana Foundation in addition to the Lending Library materials from the Alliance.

Zoo Atlanta was a training ground for 15 public-school teachers during the Center’s sixth annual weeklong professional-development workshop. In addition to lessons on brain anatomy and function and hormone activity, the teachers took behind-thescenes tours of the zoo and spent time on lengthy animal observations. The teachers developed lesson plans using what they learned and will meet again this school year to share how their lessons—and Library materials—fared in
the classroom.

At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, instructors used Lending Library materials together with sheep brains supplied by the Alliance for the neurobiology segment of the PEOPLE (Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence) program. The program brings highly motivated, low-income high school students on campus to give them a taste of academic university life.

At Washington University in St. Louis, seventh- and eighth-graders used Library materials during a Campus Y Youth summer program. So did high-school students during a five-week program at the University of Massachusetts
Medical School encouraging them to consider careers in science.

Through the Lending Library University Collaboration, the Dana Alliance offers models, charts, posters, tissue specimens, and other teaching tools to universities to be used for outreach education in local schools and in community programs. Last school year, more than 50 people borrowed items from the Atlanta collection alone, reaching more than 5,000 metro-Atlanta students, teachers, and residents.

To find out more about the program, please e-mail Karen Graham.