Principal Investigators:

Dr. Bill Whitlow (Psychology) and Dr. Joseph V. Martin (Biology) received a $5,000 grant from the Office of the Vice President for Undergraduate Education for their proposal, Developing a Research-Based Childhood Studies Courses on the Topic of Lead Poisoning and Children.

Through this initiative they developed two new science courses and a mentored summer research experience as part of the program for a minor in Childhood Studies. The courses are:

Environmental Neurochemistry: Lead Poisoning and Children – a specialized research-based course for science majors. This course aims to engage students in original research on the impact of a major environmental health concern, lead poisoning in children, and begin to develop protocols and experiments for use in a larger, interdisciplinary course, tentatively titled Urban Lead and Child Development: Lead, Brains and Children.

Urban Lead and Child Development: Lead, Brains and Children – a science course for Spring 2005. This course enables students in the Childhood Studies minor program who are not science majors to meet a science requirement in a way that is particularly germane to childhood studies. It also enables students who are science majors to take a science course that satisfies a general graduation requirement for courses on diversity.

A mentored summer research experience in which undergraduates will do research on the assessment of the effects of lead on brain, behavior and cognitive functioning is also planned. This research will also be used to develop experiments, protocols and materials for the course on urban lead poisoning and children.

These courses will engage students in research as well as service activities related to the important issue of lead poisoning, an environmental health problem that particularly challenges children in poor, urban communities. Students in the Environmental Neurochemistry course will do original research in Camden to analyze the prevalence of lead in fish from the Delaware River and local streams, in dust from local schools and day care centers, and in soil samples. They will also complete novel studies of the distribution of lead in brain tissue from biological models of human behavior and cognitive functioning. Furthermore, in conducting this research the students will help produce research-based course materials for the interdisciplinary course. Thus, the research course will help science majors better understand the uses of science in our society and, hopefully, increase their commitment to remaining in a science-based curriculum.

For more information on these new courses,
please contact either Dr. Bill Whitlow (Psychology) or Dr. Joseph V. Martin (Biology).

Update (April 18, 2005)