“A Day in the Clinical Laboratory!” STEM Outreach with St. Louis High Schools

Abstract

For the past three years, the Saint Louis University American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SLU ASBMB) student chapter has planned and held “A Day in the Clinical Laboratory.” We selected 20 sophomore and junior students from local St. Louis high schools to learn about and perform different laboratory techniques in order to complete our designed case study. During the day, we had four lab stations that included hematology, urinalysis, blood bank, and chemistry. The laboratory techniques and case study were challenging in order to allow the students to think critically and to ensure interest in the study. The individual labs were all connected, and it showed how different clinical laboratories are done and how there is a need for collaboration between different departments in order to get a diagnosis for patients. Each group of students had 30 minutes at each station to ensure that they had enough time to complete the task and to ask any questions that they had. The students that came had an interest in science or medicine, and this program allowed them to get early exposure to research, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. The event was free of charge and provided them the opportunity to see the importance in research and allowed them to network with different faculty mentors. Parents and teachers were also invited to attend, and student volunteers led a tour of the University campus facilities. High school students and their parents and teachers had the opportunity to speak with Saint Louis University Doisy College of Health Sciences Faculty on college application advising and additional opportunities available to local students interested in a scientific career. The event was run by SLU ASBMB students. At the end of the day, high school students were surveyed anonymously. All students gave positive feedback, and everyone expressed interest in attending another “A Day in the Clinical Laboratory” event.Support or Funding InformationFinancial support was received from the ASBMB Student Chapter Outreach Grant and the Saint Louis University Student Government Association.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.