“What Happens at the MBL Doesn’t Stay at the MBL”: Postscript to the UChicago Lab Schools Visit

Inspired by a week spent at the MBL last summer, several high schoolers are pursuing independent marine science projects at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. As recounted in the schools’ magazine, LabLife, two students built a saltwater tank once they got back to Chicago so they could continue studying marine organisms. One student had been intrigued by instrumentation development at MBL, “so we set him loose with some old microscopes, and he’s taken them apart and rewired them,” reports Lab Schools teacher Sharon Housinger, who set up a blog about the MBL visit. And three students set up experiments to study rotifers, the microscopic animals they met via MBL scientist Kristin Gribble, who uses them as a model system to study aging processes.