The UB/BPS Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership

In 2005, faculty at UB partnered with The Native American Magnet School to offer a program in sciences and mathematics mentoring for middle-school grades. Through a grant of $435,000 from the John R. Oishei Foundation awarded in 2007, UB, with Joseph Gardella as the Principal Investigator, is expanding the program within the Native American Magnet School and to the Math, Science and Technology Preparatory School at Seneca (MST).

The UB/BPS program emphasizes the link between the institution’s interdisciplinary research strengths and curricular change and teacher professional development. The major effort starts at the middle school level (grades 6-8) and works to move successes down to elementary school science in K-8 schools and high school science in combined middle/high schools. At the core of the UB/BPS Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership are four interrelated goals.

• teacher professional development through collaboration between faculty, the STEM graduate fellows and teachers, using established interdisciplinary science and engineering research to develop curriculum materials and hands on science and after school support,
• extended classroom and after school staffing  coordinated and led by STEM graduate students with other UB graduate and undergraduate students in service learning groups to implement new curricula and hands on science experiences,
• developing mentoring relationships with students and parents by faculty, STEM graduate students and undergraduates, and
• faculty involvement in the classroom and in school exchanges and field trips to facilities at UB and throughout the region.

Read more about the Partnership

The Summer Research Institute in Biomedical Materials Science and Engineering (RIBSE) is an intensive, 12-week program combining didactic teaching (lectures, seminars, research ethics and laboratory demonstrations) with team-based laboratory research to introduce undergraduates to facets of interdisciplinary research that require going beyond the disciplinary-based approaches in which all students are grounded. Gardella's group has worked in many areas of polymer surface chemistry relevant to bioengineering, biomaterials, tissue engineering and wound healing. His group has developed new methods to measure the surface reaction kinetics of biodegradable polymers, and combined that with methods to measure drug release kinetics, allowing fundamental insight into the mechanisms and kinetics that control of drug release in the initial stages of biodegradation, or in thin films. His group has also synthesized new classes of biodegradable materials that combine surface chemical barrier functionality with biodegradation. Note: RIBSE will not be taking place in 2008. Read more

CLIR Project.  The CLIR project solicited ideas for community-oriented research projects from the local private and public sectors from Fall 2000 through Fall 2004.

Teacher Heather Maciejewski of School 19 in renovated laboratory with physics/ engineering student team.

Undergraduate s-l student and school 19 student help parent with slime at Parent Night.

Seneca teacher and s-l students working with small group project in DNA extraction and gel electrophoresis.