York High School Bio Club

We started the year performing a PTC Tasting PCR lab. The kids extracted their DNA, did PCR, then cut the product with a restriction enzyme. The next week we electrophoresed, and then viewed the results. Afterwards, they tasted PTC paper to compare with the results. The test results matched their ability to taste! Very cool. We watched a TED presentation of Bonnie Bassler talking about quorum sensing in bacteria. We were able to obtain some bioluminescent bacteria and plated them. This week we saw them glowing in the dark! After Winter Break we will try raising zebra fish.

Whiting High School, Laramie, WY

Hi all....Whiting High School Bio Club members have started a recycling program. Members have expressed an interest in participating in the Science Bowl in February, and have started studying for it. They are also fundraising. 10 students from the general student body, , the Bio Club advisor, and the Student Council advisor will travel to Monterey, California in March. They will study at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and take in other sites while there. We are all having fun!

Osbourn Park High School starts BioClub Chapter

Osbourn Park H.S. in Manassas, VA is eagerly starting up a new Chapter of BioClub. We already have over 70 students in our club, with more inquiries weekly. Our calendar is already filled with exciting activities including Operation Turkey to help feed hungry families at Thanksgiving time, a trip to a local animal refuge to help with projects and animal care, a trip to the National Library of Medicine to tour their new exhibit, as well as scheduled opportunities to meet scientists from various fields of research in the biological science field. We also have volunteers working community events such as a bone marrow donor drive for a local leukemia patient. Our fundraising plans which include selling spiritwear with our school's Biotech Program logo to raise money to purchase materials for an introductory microarray laboratory investigation, as well as H2O testing in the stream we are adopting. We are excited to get our plans underway, and it promises to be a busy and productive year!!!

NORTHRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL NABT BIOCLUB

The Northridge High School NABT club is focusing on environmental issues. The 63 members just did a fundraiser and made almost $500 to support the paper recycling program that was started last year. Mountain High Shredding is emptying the bins every month for $30. The kids have continued and expanded the cans and plastic bottle recycling to include the middle school. By the end of this year, both programs should be totally in place. A volunteer from the community is helping to take the recyclables to the bins for the middle school's students. A trash pick up was completed Saturday (October 17) and 8 bags of trash were collected from US 20. The kids are planning a field trip to a zoo to study their endangered species programs sometime this year. We also are talking about taking a group to Washington for the Earth Day 40 Celebration in April of 2010. The students are very dedicated and doing a great job.

West High School Biology Club
Iowa City, IA

We are hosting a program by the Mac Bride Raptor Center on Thurs. Oct. 29th at our school.
This center takes in injured and abandoned raptors and feeds and rehabs these birds hopefully to be released into the wild. Some birds that are badly injured become permenant education exhibits at the center and travel around with the Raptor Center Biologists as they put on programs.
Students are also busy planning a Halloween Party and lining up speakers. Hope all of you have a great year. Its interesting to read about your activities.

East Chapel Hill Looks Forward to a Busy Year

Our Science Club (which includes the Biology Club) has gotten off to a rip-roaring start. We have great leadership - a lot of young women this time! But, we also have some great young men. Our Biology Club leader is Rachel Hainline and she will be posting here occasionally. The students just finished a Friday night of making slime and then loading the wonderful stuff into plastic eggs (with a dinosaur included). Then on Saturday (at our annual "walk for education", the Science Clubbers manned (and womaned) a booth where young children got to throw darts at a balloon board to win "dinosaur eggs". It was very popular and brought in 170 dollars for our club. It was a cold day so the cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows for 50 cents helped also!

The money will help with our 4 teams of 18 students each that we are taking to the Regional Science Olympiad in February. We also have 2 teams of students competing in the Science Bowl and 2 teams of students competing in the Blue Heron (Ocean) Bowl in later January and early February. One subgroup of clubbers does Science Dayz - where they take little science lessons to after school programs. And another offshoot of club members does the Space Settlement Competition. They were part of the National Winners this past year.

Of course biology is a big part of these competitions. We count on our biology students to study hard for various events!

It will be an active year!

Enthusiastic students run BioClub

BioClub Midland Park High School
Midland Park
New Jersey

Last school year the newly founded BioClub consisted of freshman students who all have a passion for helping the environment. The Club is student centered and the only input I gave to get them started was information about the P2D2 prescription drug disposal program. We will continue to work on it next school year.

Other projects the students were working on were fund raisers to earn money to buy building materials for bird houses and to plant native plants on school grounds.

In the new school year we will continue to work on all our projects!

Raina Parvanov-Dawson