Origin story: How a biology professor turned a grant requirement into one of the Faculty of Science’s largest and longest-running outreach initiatives

Just how good is McMaster’s plant molecular biology workshop?

Hamza Sheikh’s done the five-hour workshop nine times.

Sheikh did the workshop for the first time last spring as a Grade 12 on a class trip to Mac. The other eight times happened while Sheikh was in his first year of McMaster’s Life Science Gateway program.

He had signed up to be a workshop volunteer through a special one credit course offered by the Faculty of Science’s Office of Undergraduate Research. To earn an academic credit, Sheikh only needed to complete a training session and volunteer times. But he kept volunteering through the fall and spring / summer terms.

For his ninth workshop in late May, Sheikh made the early morning commute from his home in Milton. When the workshop ended mid-afternoon, he headed off to class.

“I was happy to help out.”

When asked why he kept volunteering, Sheikh credits the workshop for giving him a head start and confidence boost before starting at Mac. Until the workshop, he’d never been in a lab. He’s returning the favour by helping other students who are heading off to university.

“The workshop reduced some of the imposter syndrome I would’ve felt walking into a university lab for the first time. The workshop took away a lot of the initial anxiety because the environment, the equipment and the expectations already felt familiar to me.”

Sheikh, who’s now heading into the Honours Biochemistry program in September, not only knows how to use all the lab equipment and run the workshop’s experiments, he knows how high school students will react. “My favourite moments are seeing students get the hang of things for the first time. Whether it’s pipetting correctly, loading a gel or seeing their results come through, watching their confidence grow by the end of the session is incredibly rewarding.”

And that’s exactly what Elizabeth Weretilnyk was hoping for when she launched the workshop in 2010. When it comes to community outreach in the Faculty of Science, the plant molecular biology workshop is among the largest and longest running.

Upwards of 1,000 students from dozens of high schools throughout the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area make the trek to Mac every year.

The workshop grew out of a single line item requirement in a research grant awarded to Weretilnyk, a professor in the Department of Biology and an expert in plant biology, microbiology, genomics and bioinformatics.

Launching an educational website to explain her research was her initial plan but Weretilnyk saw the need and opportunity for embedding a workshop into secondary school science curriculums. As an added bonus, the workshop would give many students like Sheikh their first confidence-building lab experience ahead of university.

The workshop’s five-hour runtime was an intentional decision. “We knew schools from outside Hamilton wouldn’t sign up if the commute to our campus took longer than the workshop,” says Weretilnyk.

Having students for a full-day created more than enough time for learning by doing. The workshop’s entirely hands-on and interactive, with students learning how to amplify DNA and monitor gene activity by running experiments on Arabidopsis thaliana plants.

The experiments were designed by fourth-year student Phil Carella who’s now a group leader at the John Innes Centre – an independent, international centre of excellence in plant science, genetics and microbiology. “We’ve tweaked the workshop over the years but the core remains Phil’s handiwork,” says Weretilnyk.

When the grant ended, the workshop continued. “We didn’t really have a choice. Teachers told us that ending the workshop wasn’t an option. They were counting on us so we had to carry on. I didn’t think we’d still be doing the workshop after the grant ended, let alone 16 years later after we first started.”

The easy solution would’ve been to charge schools a registration fee. That was never an option for Weretilnyk, who believes science should be barrier-free and accessible to all. “Any fee that we charged a school would get passed on to the students. That would be a barrier for many students and entire schools.”

So Weretilnyk made it her mission to get creative in running the workshop on a shoestring budget without compromising the research experience for students.

In 2019, Weretilnyk and her faculty colleagues Rosa da Silva and the late Juliet Daniel secured a PromoScience grant in 2019 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada – the grant supports hands-on learning experiences for young Canadians and their educators.

The workshops also became a family affair with Weretilnyk’s husband – Peter Summers – and their children Heather and Ian Summers pitching in as volunteers. Weretilnyk fit the workshops around her teaching, research and committee commitments. “I’d finish teaching a class and then race over to run the workshop. It’s definitely been a labour of love.”

The biology department brought in reinforcements last year, with technicians Tracy Rerecich and Noah Xiao now helping out. “We couldn’t have kept the workshop going without Tracy and Noah and the continuing support from the department,” says Weretilnyk.

Xiao knew about the Office of Undergraduate Research’s one unit science research volunteer course from his work with students at the Learning and Discovery Greenhouse. Through the course, up to 20 undergrads earn an academic credit for volunteering with the workshop.

“Many of the students keep helping out long after they’ve put in the required 20 hours,” says Weretilnyk. “It’s a really rewarding experience and a lot of fun.”

And some of the Mac students find their calling by helping run the workshop. Every year, Weretilnyk writes reference letters for students who’ve applied to teacher’s college because of their experiences working alongside high school students. “While it’s the first time in a lab for many high school students, for many of our undergraduate students it’s their first time being in a teaching role.”

While the focus is on running experiments, high school students also learn about life at McMaster. Along with an hour-long lunch to explore the campus, side conversations during the workshops cover everything from residences and meal plans to programs, favourite courses and extracurriculars. Many workshops end with the McMaster students leading informal Q&A sessions. The timing couldn’t be better, says Xiao. “We’ve had students receive their offers from McMaster while they’re in the workshop.”

For the second last workshop of the spring, the team welcomed 40 students from Milliken Mills High School in Markham. It was the schools’ third visit in three years.

Science teacher Lilian Tu, a 2001 biochemistry grad, jokes that her school should get paid a finder’s fee. “So many of our students who’ve attended the workshop are now McMaster students.”

The school’s connection with Mac started when a student doing a project on climate change reached out to Weretilnyk. Not only did she help the student, she drove up to the school and gave a talk with Da Silva, who’s also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the Faculty of Science.

“What McMaster is doing with this workshop is so very, very important, meaningful and enriching for our students,” says Tu. The school has the second lowest average family income in the district. “If this workshop wasn’t offered, our school couldn’t afford another option and our students would miss out.”

Like Tu, department chair and biology professor Marie Elliot is a big fan of the workshop launched 16 years ago by Weretilnyk.

“The workshop’s been highly sought after by high schools from all over southern Ontario,” says Elliot. “The combination of being able to come on campus, and actually do lab work, has been an incredible draw. There’s an enormous appetite for hands-on experiences like this and I know that the workshop has inspired some students to pursue their undergraduate education at McMaster. Elizabeth, Peter, Heather, Rosa, Tracy and Xiao, together with their many volunteers, have been phenomenal ambassadors for our department, the Faculty of Science, and McMaster University.

More information on the plant molecular biology workshop is available here.

Photos by River Oliver.