The lab is quiet. Suddenly, a student exclaims, “I figured out how to do it!” These moments of joy keep instructors Jeff Essner and Renu Srivastava motivated.
“The students’ enthusiasm gives us enthusiasm,” said Srivastava, an associate teaching professor in genetics, development and cell biology, who teaches Biology 4230L: Developmental Biology Laboratory alongside Essner.
Essner, professor of genetics, development and cell biology, began teaching the course in 2006, and Srivastava joined in 2019. “A lot of buzz” was generated for the lab when the gene-editing technology, CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), was introduced in 2013, Essner said. Course enrollment increased from 10 students in the early days to more than 60 students each semester now. The increase can be attributed not only to the introduction of CRISPR, but to the hands-on, student-driven learning structure of the lab.
Dive further into what happens in Biology 423L: Developmental Biology Laboratory in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' article by Whitney Baxter, "Zebrafish research ignites students' scientific curiosity."