Biomedical program begins with mystery

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Van Wert High School’s new biomedical program took a page from the CSI television franchise this week. Students in the class, which is new to Van Wert High School this year, were presented with a medical mystery when they arrived for class on Tuesday.

The kids found a dead body on the floor of the classroom when they came to class and will now have to find out what happened to the woman — actually a medical mannequin — named “Anna Garcia.”

As part of the class, teacher Chuck Rollins talked Jefferson Elementary Principal Kevin Gehres and Vantage Adult Education instructor Jackie Brandt, both volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians, to come in and do CPR on “Anna” and also show students how a real medical emergency would be handled by first-responders.

“I knew that we needed to get a ‘wow’ factor and get these kids’ attention,” Rollins said, adding that he knew Gehres was an EMT from his wife, who also works at Jefferson.

Rollins explained that students would research “Anna’s” case throughout the coming school year. “The entire first-year curriculum is all about finding out how ‘Anna Garcia’ died,” Rollins said. “They (students) will go and eliminate some possibilities (and) do some self-directed research” to find out the actual cause of death, using clues that were at the scene, as well as information students find on the Internet and elsewhere.

The class is the first for the new biomedical program at VWHS. Eventually, there will be four high school-level courses, and Superintendent Ken Amstutz has also said there is a possibility of expanding it into the middle school in the future.

The biomedical class is also a component of the district’s Project Lead the Way curriculum, which also includes an engineering program taught by Bob Spath. It’s also indicative of Van Wert City Schools’ increasing focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and project-based education, in partnership with Vantage Career Center.

“The focus of those programs is teamwork, meeting deadlines and learning to think critically and solving problems for themselves,” he noted. “One of the coolest part of this program is we don’t give them answers, they have to figure it out. They have to be creative and do something on their own.”

He also said the Project Lead the Way programs would fit in well with the New Tech High School program that Van Wert City Schools would be implementing over the next year or so, thanks to a $750,000 federal Race to the Top grant.

“The New Tech High School and Project Lead the Way go hand in hand,” Rollins explained. “They’re really two of the same animal.”

Rollins said one of the other main focuses of the new biomedical program is to expose students to the various careers available in that field and to give them an idea of what it takes to work in those careers. Students will be exposed to 44 careers in biomedical science in the first year alone, he noted, and approximately 150 different jobs over the four-year curriculum.

“The program goes into the careers in some detail: What kind of schooling is needed, what does it pay, if you do it full-time,” Rollins said, adding that the students would be exposed to just about every job there is in biomedical science by the time they’re seniors.

Another plus for the program is that students can also purchase up to 12 semester hours of college credit at greatly discounted rates if they take a test at the end of each course and pass with a score of 80 percent or higher.

Rollins said he is also excited about the quality of the curriculum that comes with the program.

“The curriculum is just very brilliantly conducted and set up,” Rollins said. “I’ve been so impressed with how interesting they’ve made everything.

“Just like kids are fascinated by CSI on TV, that’s what the whole first year is: basically CSI,” he added.

In addition, he likes the fact that the program focuses on project-based learning instead of more traditional memorization learning. “It’s not about me lecturing, it’s about kids doing,” Rollins said.

Furthermore, he noted, the curriculum is already in place and is well respected nationwide. “One of the hardest things for a teacher to do is develop a curriculum that engages students and that has already been done here.”