The Daily News

Two professors at North Dakota State College of Science have been awarded grants for their efforts at curriculum improvement.

Dr. Kevin Gyolai and Dr. William Shay, a professor and assistant professor in the math and science department, respectively, received the NASA North Dakota Space Grant Consortium Summer Faculty Fellowship Award this summer.

Gyolai garnered funding to offer animal cell culturing at the freshman level, a rarity in the academic world. For three weeks, students will subdivide and grow a culture of cat kidney cells during lab and keep it free of bacteria or fungi.

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"They're going to get a fairly comprehensive, step-by-step on what to do and what the pitfalls are," he said. "Students really get a sense of satisfaction knowing that they're able to do it successfully and understand it's a really difficult task."

The project was one Gyolai had planned on for awhile but hadn't had the time or funding to achieve it. Cell culturing requires the usage of an inverted microscope, a special incubator and an individual who has the expertise to teach the process, all factors two-year colleges traditionally lack. University biology majors usually don't participate in the lab until they reach their final year of school.

Now backed by one-year funding, Gyolai said the class can give students the edge they need to transfer to a four-year institution and get a job.

"It [also] gives them a sense of pride, knowing that they're able to do this when they normally wouldn't have the opportunity," he said.

Shay expressed a similar assessment. His grant allows sophomores to assume a more active role during their organic chemistry class, a tried-and-true method he learned two years ago after testing the idea on freshman chemistry students.

By not revealing every detail of an experiment in advance, students are forced to develop their critical thinking skills, he said. Most chemistry books have every move spelled out.

"I call a lot of chemistry books cookbooks," he said. "There's no discovery, there's no surprises."

Although he does provide students with an overview, he withholds the end result of the experiment. If they melt a solid to a liquid, for instance, students will be told how to set up the melting point apparatus, but that's about it.

"They'll have to figure out [the rest[ on their own," he said. "It's more like how science is. If you were going to try and do an unknown experiment, you don't really know where it's going to go. This kind of puts that aspect of science in the academic class."

The NASA North Dakota Space Grant Consortium awards grants each year on a competitive basis. Both Shay and Gyolai won $5,000 each and can re-apply for the grant next year.

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