Northern Manitoba

The Northern Manitoba SABC program is in its third year as a pilot to determine how schools, teachers and students living away from large urban centres, where possible mentors for SABC are more common, can benefit from one of Canada’s most prestigious science programs for high school students. With Swan Valley Regional Secondary School student, Kirsten Larson, receiving the 2009 national prize for the project with the most promising commercial application, it is clear that students in the north can overcome the problems of time and space to participate and succeed in this program.

The NSABC program is still being built. MIndSet, as the host of the NSABC, hopes to increase the number of schools, teachers, students, communities and mentors participating from the North. To that end a Northern advisory committee has been recruited from interested organizations in the North including MAFRI and University College of the North. A training session for mentors has also increased the number of projects that one day might come out of Northern Manitoba.

In addition, there have been other signs that biotechnology and life science can attract more youth. Several students from northern centres attended the Youth Biomedical Laboratory Camp at the Inner City Science Laboratory during the past summer. Students, teachers and administrators involved in NSABC from Swan Valley Regional Secondary School in Swan River and Hapnot Collegiate in Flin Flon participated in a field trip to the Worthington, Minnesota veterinary medicine bioscience cluster. The purpose of these events have been to increase students’ knowledge and attraction to biotechnology. The Worthington experience, especially, was an outstanding learning experience as students had many hands on laboratory experiences.

Other schools contacted and interested in participating in the NSABC include Frontier Collegiate, Cranberry Portage, Joe A. Ross School in the OCN First Nations and Margaret Barbour Collegiate Institute in The Pas. Students from all these schools will be invited to the Student Biotechnology Conference being held in February.

Activities to provide educators with more background in biotechnology have also been undertaken including a hands on lab on the Chemistry of Food, followed by a screening of a segment of Kitchen Crimes as a vehicle for putting infectious disease into the context of student’s daily lives. At the same time, some of the teachers at SVRSS are moving from being consumers of biotechnology knowledge to being ‘creators’ of innovation with a partnership project with Microsoft Canada to look at the use of Microsoft’s OneNote as an organizational framework to organize biotech research from a number of text, audio, video and internet resources.

This year’s competition and awards event will be held April 8-9 in The Pas, Manitoba. For more information, please contact Norman Lee, nlee35@shaw.ca, or 204-269-3383.

Our 2010 Northern Manitoba Projects
Swan Valley Regional Secondary School (Swan River, Manitoba), 6 Projects, 7 students, Teacher Advisor: Paula Norman

Aaron Sagert , “Biodiesel in Oil Crops Using Camelina Seeds,” Mentor Dr. Jim Daun, Agrianalytical

Joel Hart and Dexter Bird, “Usage of Biofilms,” Mentor: Dawson Reimer, Medicue Inc.

Breanna Anderson, “Is Natural vs Processed Really Better: A Comparison of Nutrients in Colestrum,” Mentor Dr. Keith Immerkar, Swan Valley Vet Clinic

Taylor Henkelman, ”Camelina can be a Viable Transformer Lubricant’ “ Mentor: Carte International Inc.

Emily Klekta, “Hydroponic vs Traditional Tomato Growing Methods,” Mentor Betty MacLure, Swan Valley Vet Clinic

Bryce Betcher, “Snag Frequencies in New Forests,” Mentor Dan Soprovich, Manitoba National Resources and Conservation

Hapnot Collegiate,(Flin Flon, Manitoba), 2 Projects, 2 students, Teacher Advisor: Robyne Mansell

Mikayla Gawiak, “Biomimicry of Yellow Mould for Optimum Pathways,” Mentor: Dr. Jim Daun (facilitator)

Kris Sattelberger, “Toe Nail Clippings as a Diagnostic Indicator of the Presence of Arsenic or Heavy Metals,” Mentor: Various (facilitated by Norman Lee)