Team:AFCM-Egypt/Human Practices
SynBio Course 101
We all know that SynBio is a new and exciting field, our excitement for it was the reason why we decided to put together an iGEM team and see its real-world applications. The journey towards understanding this field took us a lot of self-learning, challenges as well as ups and downs. This is why we decided we wanted to make it easier for students from our college in the coming years. The dream of establishing a SynBio elective in our curriculum seemed far-fetched at first, but we got together with the administration of our college and decided to work towards this purpose.
We learned how to craft intended learning outcomes, decide upon teaching modalities and how to select which assessment method to use for assessment of learning. A workshop, few drafts and lots of challenges later, we submitted a proposal for “SynBio101: An introduction to synthetic biology”, an elective course offered to year 2 and year 5 medical students.
The suggested curriculum covers SynBio principles, wet lab techniques, safety, biosecurity and entrepreneurship. We made sure to create a highly interactive curriculum filled with problem and team-based learning strategies challenging students to respond to SynBio case studies relating to various aspects in SynBio. Our suggestion was reviewed by AFCM’s medical education development unit (MEDU) and the curriculum committee and received approval! We are thrilled to report that we will be the first medical college in our region to officially provide a SynBio component in the curriculum! Our course starts in December, is coordinated by our instructors and we get to teach! We’re beyond excited to see our efforts come to fruition.
Smoking Free
Seeing that smoking is a main contributor for different bladder cancer types, it was an indispensable factor to be in held in our consideration during the planning of our human practices. And since true change starts from within, we decided to start with our very own campus and community.
With this in mind, we launched an awareness campaign against the hazards and perils of smoking. We started by hosting awareness lectures for people within our community. We addressed cadets, officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers on the subject of smoking and its side effects for both active and passive smokers.
Interest and ambition was very prominent to end the era of smoking after the campaign as attendees realized how pernicious smoking is for them. Hence, we turned our plans into action by communicating with the college administration and getting a green light to declare our campus a “Smoke-free Area”.
We distributed "NO SMOKING" signs all over the campus and created a designated outdoor smoking area. Our smoke-free ambassadors ensured that it was known to everyone that smoking outside the designated smoking area is prohibited. By applying these rules and plans we became an officially smoke-free campus which was an incredibly proud moment for us.
Art and Science
Following the massive advances currently taking place in the scientific community, the combination of art and science was deemed essential in order to sustain the financial and social support of both stakeholders and the community as a whole. Thus, we sought the support of our art team in AFCM. They were given a lecture in which the general theme of the idea was explained and possible ideas for its transformation into art were discussed. Our aim of all of this was to simplify and transform synthetic biology ideas into artworks in order to aid in their delivery to the non-scientific community.
Don't just take our word for it; a picture speaks a thousand words, so we gave you a few of those.
