Molecular and cellular biology students prepare for first open house this weekend

Online Poster

Online Poster

By Kate Kostal

After months of preparation and years of planning, the first ever Molecular and Cellular Biology Open House will be held on Saturday, April 9th in Illini Union rooms 209, 210 and 314. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and was the brainchild of three University students.

“To be honest, any time I’m not working on an exam I’m working on the open house,” said Kelly Cushing, senior in LAS, majoring in MCB and event organizer. She is also the current Vice President of Linking Illini with a General Appreciation for Science and the Environment (LIGASE).

Cushing and her twin sister Erin, who is a senior in LAS, majoring in chemistry and serving as the advertising chair of LIGASE, worked to turn the idea of an open house into a reality. With the efforts of Celeste Radosevich, senior in LAS, majoring in MCB and president of LIGASE, the idea gained momentum and will be featuring sections for grade school children, high school students, university students and adults from the community.

The entire idea of an open house began after the fall of 2003, when LIGASE began. After meeting with faculty and putting pamphlets out on Quad Day 2004, enough people responded to organize committees. By January, weekly meetings were finalizing the last details of the April 9th event.

“One of the first reasons we wanted to have this open house is that biology is starting to touch every area of life,” Radosevich said. The different sections focus on select topics. There are activities for the younger children, featuring a DNA extraction from strawberries and a Velcro board where children can rearrange chromosomes.

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“The plasticity, the ability to retain information, of a little kid is much better than adults,” Radosevich said.

“The stuff in the kids’ section is so interesting,” Erin Cushing said.

The high school students that attend will be able to explore what MCB is like at the University. To get more students involved and interested in MCB, Erin Cushing, Kelly Cushing and Radosevich are targeting those students about to make the jump from high school to a university.

“What types of careers are associated with MCB and the U of I program will be presented,” Kelly Cushing said. “It’s important to expose the students to all fields.”

Those fields would be discussed in greater detail in the section targeting undergrads where careers associated with MCB will be presented. In addition to the traditional career paths of medicine and research, students can also explore biology in law, bioethics, business, journalism, scientific writing and forensics.

The section for current undergrads will also have a poster contest. Four people who are either faculty members, MD students or Ph.D students will judge entries representing students’ scientific research. The judges will choose three winners.

“It’s open to any undergrad in MCB for participation. A lot of MCB students work in IB (Integrated Biology) labs,” Erin Cushing said. Use of a lab is also needed for a student to participate.

The cash prizes of $150 for first place, $50 for second and $25 for third were made possible through funding from the open house sponsors. Kimberly-Clark, the School of MCB, Biology Advising Office and S.O.R.F. all contributed by either providing funding or sending experiment demonstrations that will be presented at the open house.

For the adults in the community, Erin Cushing, Kelly Cushing and Radosevich wanted to bring some issues out concerning ethics and MCB. Speakers will be there to present both sides of the arguments.

“There are so many issues out there like stem cell research that a lot of people may not know what it is,” Kelly Cushing said. “There’s a lot of biological-political

conflict.”

The sections are not targeting only MCB students. Any person interested is welcome to attend.

“We organized this to make it applicable for everyone,” Radosevich said.

The open house will feature other organizations as well. Booths for pre-optometry and pre-physician’s assistant will be present to help expose these careers to the community.

“MCB majors are great, but we really want those people with no biological background to come,” Kelly Cushing said.

“We’re not doing this for us,” Kelly Cushing said, “We’re doing it to expose other people to biology. And if other groups can bring something we can’t, that’s amazing.”

The event starts at 9 a.m., Saturday, when MCB becomes more than just a science class and turns into a topic that took two years to present.