At the beginning of this school year, many students made the journey out to collect the supplies they need for class—highlighters, loose leaf paper, number two pencils—but students in Mr. Brady’s class at New Philadelphia High School will soon be collecting an unusual school supply: Ticks.
Photo: A microcentrifuge tube containing ticks collected in the field.
Over the past several years, Dr. Risa Pesapane, Principal Investigator of the Parasite and Pathogen Ecology Lab, has been collaborating with educator Mr. Kip Brady at the New Philadelphia High School in Tuscarawas County. Together they have created lab modules corresponding with the high school biology curriculum that have students collecting and analyzing tick pathogen data.
This process introduces students to hands-on STEM research, collects and analyzes tick pathogen data from Tuscarawas County, and has drawn community attention to the public health issues of tick-borne diseases.
How did it all begin?
Dr. Pesapane describes the project as “serendipitous.” Risa came into contact with Kip Brady through a mutual friend, Bill Peterman in the School of Environment and Natural Resources.
Mr. Brady had been encountering ticks while looking at vegetation in reclaimed mining areas—and had some questions about the tiny arachnids that seemed to be everywhere. He was aware of many people in the community becoming sick with Lyme Disease, along with the prevalence of black-legged ticks (which transmit the disease).
Risa told the IDI, “I have a special fondness with K-12 because my father was a K-12 educator in a high-needs district for 44 years before retiring, so I’m familiar with those challenges, and what it means to be an educator who’s willing to reach out to a university and say ‘Hey, we’re observing some interesting things and I have some ideas for what students can do–and I’m looking for expert guidance.”
Beginning with meetings over Zoom, Kip and Risa began to talk about what students could do with the ticks in their environment. At first, Kip thought of having the students go out and collect ticks [to send in for testing], but Risa, “felt certain that he could test the ticks too—do DNA extraction and tick testing in the high school.” From there, they began to make a plan.
Risa says that Mr. Brady “has a passion for the diversity and excitement of the different [lab] activities,” and how “he recognizes the importance of showing students how much science is applied to their daily lives, and how they can have an invested role in science in their community—things that impact them and their families.”
Dr. Pesapane believes that the ticks collected by Mr. Brady and his students are the only ticks that have been tested for pathogens from Tuscarawas County. Furthermore, until the beginning of the Pesapane Lab in 2019, there was little data on tick-borne pathogens in the state of Ohio, save for a 2012 study.
In the time since, the capacity for tick testing in Ohio has been expanded with increased surveillance by the Ohio Department of Health, who submitted ticks to the CDC for testing in 2019 and 2020, however none of those ticks were from Tuscarawas.
Risa credits the course design to Mr. Brady’s visionary ideas. With Mr. Brady overseeing the course content, and Dr. Pesapane providing guidance on lab methods and design, the two created a series of modules that take students through the start-to-finish process of testing ticks for pathogens.
Each part of the process aligns with a different aspect of the 10th grade biology learning standards set in place by the Ohio Department of Education. Through the tick collection and testing process, they can talk about biodiversity, ecosystems, cellular genetics, the structure and function of DNA, and many other learning targets. The process as a whole gives students a first-hand experience of the scientific method.
While Mr. Brady’s students learn about the structure and genetic function of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acids, they learn how to extract pathogen DNA from their ticks. As they move forward, they go on to perform a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to amplify that DNA in order to have a sample that they can analyze for genetic comparison.
Of course, there are considerations that need to be made when taking the process from a collegiate research lab into a high school classroom. While the Pesapane Lab has the equipment to run real-time PCR, this is not feasible for a high-school classroom. PCR involves a series of heating and cooling samples to activate and stop biochemical reactions. While there are machines that automate this process, the conventional methods of using heat-blocks and thermocyclers are considered acceptable methods.
Photo: A lab bench in Mr. Brady's classroom, set up for gel electrophoresis and visual gel analysis.
After Risa and Kip set up the lab in his classroom, Kip tested the methods that would be used by the students. The samples run and analyzed by Kip in his classroom were in complete agreement with the same samples tested in the Pesapane lab.
Another challenge of adapting the lab processes to a high school scale involves the time constraints of high school class schedules. A lab period might be an hour, where the start to finish process of a procedure can take much longer—so some processes have to be expanded over multiple days.
Risa described that in her lab, there are dedicated stations and supplies for each step of the tick-testing process. However, in order for an entire class to work through a lab procedure at once, it’s necessary to create stations where groups of students can work together. Some lab steps, for example the use of a heat block or thermocycler, can be completed by the entire class at once—as these devices can hold up to 96 samples at a time.
Photo: A student pipetting samples into wells for gel electrophoresis.
Risa noted the differences in acquiring supplies between Ohio State’s resources and that of a high school. The scale of the university makes it easier to find affordable prices for laboratory equipment and supplies. The New Philadelphia High School has had challenges to find affordable ‘consumables,’ the small plastic pieces, like pipette tips and microcentrifuge tubes.
In response to the challenges, Risa said that she “can’t underestimate how much motivation Kip has, because there are a million places where you could say ‘this is more work than is required of me,’ but he’s gone out of his way to talk to the school board and principals and has submitted and received two grants.”
Those grants are from the Entomological Society of America—Chrysalis fund, and the Ohio Environmental Education Fund, supported by the EPA.
What comes next?
“I know he has high aspirations of seeing that it’s something that more than one school could do and that it could be replicated in other parts of the US.”
Risa expressed hope for the expansion of the program into a cookie-cutter curriculum that could be implemented at other schools—as it is something that allows high school students to deepen their knowledge and understanding of STEM topics with real-world applications.
“I think that it’s amazing and shows that anyone can do science.”
“I almost think of it as a triple bottom line, they’re learning about tick-borne disease, which is a genuine risk in their county, but then they’re getting this exposure to science, and sharing what they’re finding with public health agencies and the local health departments, and I know people are very excited about it at the county level.”
Risa hopes that this will inspire students to go into vector-borne disease work, especially public health or veterinary entomology. “I’m in favor of getting the amount of education you need for the job you want.” Risa described the higher-ed trend of pushing research-interested students toward a PhD— “but there are valuable and satisfying occupations that you can do with a bachelors or masters.”
When asked if she had advice to other IDI members or faculty interested in getting involved with K-12, Risa expressed that it is a matter of making time for passionate people who ask for help. “When educators are asking us, it’s important to make time.” Risa also suggested that people looking for collaborations may want to reach out to the OSU Extension office.
Want to read more about the Tick Project? Check out Mr. Brady’s Website!
Written by Marie Klever