Project Summary/Abstract
Boston University School of Medicine’s new SEPA project, entitled "Mystery of the Crooked Cell 2.0: CityLab’s
Next Generation Socioscientific Approach to Gene Editing," addresses the imperative that NIH's pre-college
activities focus on biomedical workforce preparedness, especially for underrepresented minorities (URM). This
project will reach close to 600 local URM students and, through planned dissemination, will reach thousands of
students. CityLab is partnering with five Boston-area high schools and two afterschool STEM/health professions
enrichment programs to test the effectiveness of embedding a focus on socioscientific reasoning (SSR) to
promote understanding of gene editing. An SSR approach places science content in a meaningful social context
and motivates students to take ownership of their learning. SSR skills include realizing the complexity of the
content and context of an issue, analyzing an issue from multiple perspectives, seeking out sources of bias in
data, and considering how and whether scientific investigations can advance understanding of an issue.
This project will expand CityLab’s “Mystery of the Crooked Cell” hands-on, inquiry-based curriculum supplement
that focuses on the molecular basis of sickle cell disease (SCD) by incorporating state-of-the-art gene editing
content that is suffused with SSR. The new curriculum supplement, Mystery of the Crooked Cell 2.0 (MCC 2.0),
will seamlessly integrate three elements: CityLab’s curriculum storyline and laboratory experiences, computer
simulations of molecular biology assays developed at University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and immersive virtual
reality simulations of gene editing for SCD therapies developed at UC Berkeley Innovative Genomics Institute.
SSR will be embedded throughout MCC 2.0, as will awareness of STEM/biomedical science careers. CityLab
will also build NextGen Scholars, a learning community that will not only engage students in advanced science
content and lab applications using SSR but also foster attitudes that support equity and diversity in STEM. This
project will demonstrate the feasibility and replicability of this pedagogical strategy; CityLab will then disseminate
the curriculum widely and thereby sow the seeds for a diverse and inclusive future STEM workforce.
The major objectives of the proposed project are: (1) to create MCC 2.0 in collaboration with high school teachers
and students, (2) to build a diverse community of learners who use SSR to explore advanced science topics
while gaining insights into the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in science, health, and
society, (3) to examine changes in students’ science content understanding, SSR skills, science learner identity,
and attitudes towards diversity in the biomedical sciences and medicine, (4) to track student participants through
college to understand the broader impact of this approach, and (5) to earn designation as one of the first “High-
Quality Design” high school lessons that are aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
This new SEPA initiative is a unique way to pilot, refine, and disseminate a first-of-its-kind science education
program that will increase the diversity of the STEM/biomedical science workforce.
