Growing Project BioEYES: A Reflection on 20 Years of Developing and Replicating a K-12 Science Outreach Program

Abstract

Project BioEYES celebrated 20 years in K12 schools during the 2022–2023 school year. Using live zebrafish (Danio rerio) during week-long science experiments, sparks the interest of students and teachers from school districts, locally and globally. Over the past two decades, BioEYES has been replicated in different ways based on the interest and capacity of our partners. This article discusses several of the successful models, the common challenges, and how each BioEYES site has adopted guiding principles to help foster their success. The core principles of (a) reinforcing content that students are expected to learn in schools, while focusing on the students BECOMING scientists through hands-on experimentation and (b) establishing trust and buy-in from collaborating teachers and partners are what has led to BioEYES being sustained and replicated over the past two decades.

Introduction

BioEYES is an example of how collaborations between educators and scientists can bring new opportunities to students and expand the public perception of scientists. The program began in 2002, when Drs. Steve Farber, a zebrafish researcher, and Jamie Shuda, a public-school educator, collaborated to develop an outreach program to bring live science to local Philadelphia students. The program is now in its 20th year and since its inception has reached over 180,000 students worldwide. The program uses live zebrafish (Danio rerio) to preform a week-long science experiment, focusing on genetics and evolutionary biology. These laboratories allow the students to have a hands-on opportunity to view themselves as scientists, increase their interest in science, and allow underrepresented minorities to imagine a career as a scientist. The program uses partner sites to grow their network of collaborators, including teachers and their students. These partner sites provide the necessary materials and resources as well as classroom support to local schools.

Partner sites were traditionally universities, which house the zebrafish and required scientific materials for the BioEYES program, but over the last 10 years have grown to also include professional science societies and after-school and summer nonprofit programs.

The mission of BioEYES are to spark student engagement and to assist teachers. As a former educator herself, Dr. Shuda designed BioEYES to provide all the materials needed for the program as well as outreach educators who offer scientific support and model hands-on laboratories in the classroom to teachers. This involvement allows teachers to gain confidence in teaching science in new ways, promoting life-science learning styles that can be applied beyond the BioEYES experience. The teacher professional development components provide educators with direct interactions with science professionals at leading scientific research institutions to enhance their familiarity with scientists and build scientific competencies. These efforts all support the primary goal of the BioEYES program, which is to teach key life science concepts while instilling a sense of wonder and excitement in students. Early on, it was evident that this goal could be implemented in many different learning environments and that BioEYES could be successfully replicated by other scientists, informal science professionals, and teachers.

In this article, we first provide background on the BioEYES program. Then we explore different BioEYES models adopted at different sites to offer examples of how university outreach initiatives can be implemented. Consistent across all BioEYES sites are these two fundamental aims: (1) Reinforcing content that students are expected to learn in schools (i.e., alignment with regional and national curriculum grade level standards), while focusing on the students BECOMING scientists and (2) establishing trust and buy-in from collaborating teachers and partners.

Since the program's inception at Thomas Jefferson University in 2002, the program has expanded to include multiple partner sites, sustained and grew despite its founders (Shuda and Farber) moving to different universities, and has received multiple awards for the impact Project BioEYES has made on students around the world. Figure 1 outlines BioEYES's milestones over the past 20 years.

FIG. 1.

BioEYES launched in 2002 and celebrated its 20th school year from September–June 2023. These milestones exemplify the growth and events important to the program's journey.

The current active partner sites include the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn); John Hopkins University (JHU); Monash University in Australia; the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Williams College; Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research (PSBR); Kids Interested in Technology, Engineering, and Science (KITES); The Ohio State University; and the University of California, Irvine.

Curriculum Recap

During the week-long experiment, each student is invited to assume the role of a scientist. Students work in small groups to set up mating pairs of zebrafish on day 1. On day 2, they collect the fertilized eggs and then watch them develop over the course of the week, with the aid of a microscope. Just like a research scientist in the laboratory, students hypothesize and test ideas, record findings, draw conclusions, and think critically about the impact scientific research has on our community. They record everything in a workbook provided by the program. In an age-appropriate way, students learn to use the scientific method, gain knowledge of basic developmental biology and genetics, and discuss higher education and STEM careers.

There are multiple BioEYES units that span different grade levels allowing sites to vary what is being taught. However, the primary curricula that each site chooses from include the following weeklong units:

• Nano (2nd/3rd grade): Basic anatomy, habitats, life cycles, and similarities and differences between humans and fish.

• Micro (4th/5th grade): Comparisons between humans and zebrafish, including discussions about how the fish's natural tropical environment is similar to and different from where the students live, what both human and zebrafish embryos need to survive and where they get it, how gills are different from lungs, and the function of the heart.

• Intermediate Genetics (middle school): Middle school students try to determine what the phenotype of the offspring will be if they mate an albino and a wild-type (striped) zebrafish. This is used to introduce or review the concepts of basic Mendelian genetics, dominant and recessive traits, and Punnett squares.

• Advanced Genetics (high school and gifted middle school): Students perform more complicated genetic crosses by adding heterozygous carriers of the pigment mutation. This creates a more in-depth Mendelian experiment, where the students must determine the genotype of their original adult fish by observing the phenotypes of the offspring. Along the way, students discuss higher-level concepts such as stem cells and vertebrate development.

• AP Genetics (high school): Students try to answer, What is the inheritance pattern of wild type vs. nacre zebrafish?” Students are challenged to think about how to design such an experiment, are introduced to many different types of zebrafish mutants, and ultimately over 1 week they try to identify if their inheritance pattern is autosomal dominant or recessive, codominant, or shows incomplete dominance.

Additional extensions have been developed to support or complement our core curricula. These include:

• Pre-K Explorer's Club: In one lesson, this unit explores adult and baby zebrafish, what living things need to survive, compares humans to zebrafish, and uses scientific tools, such as a microscope.

• Fish Dynamics (middle/high school): Students hypothesize how temperature change affects zebrafish embryo growth over the course of 1 week. They study how to design the experiment and which scientific tools to use, and they practice completing bar and line graphs on a daily basis. Intermediate/Advanced Genetics is a prerequisite.

• Keep Your Heart Healthy (middle/high school): This two-lesson module discusses cholesterol—what it is, where it comes from, and its effect on health, as well as how research organisms like zebrafish can be used to develop new medications for heart disease.

No matter the grade level or learning level of the students, every child becomes a scientist and sets up small group experiments using tools directly from the laboratory, including high-quality microscopes, Petri dishes, and pipettes. Each student is given an attractive student journal to work in. In it they make hypotheses, record observations by drawing and writing, collect and record data, and complete bar or line graphs showing the mortality rate of their embryos. Students are also responsible for caring for the baby zebrafish.

Each unit aligns to state science standards as well as the Next Generation Science Standards. Aligning to the standards means we are doing our part to support students' and the districts' achievement goals. To see the BioEYES alignment, visit our webpage for a description of our weekly lessons. To read more details about the BioEYES curriculum, see Shuda & Kearns-Sixsmith.¹

Teacher Partnerships and Professional Development

A unique feature of the BioEYES program is the amount of support it provides to the partnering classroom teachers, a key piece of BioEYES's success and longevity. Our evaluation data consistently indicate that teachers appreciate the ability to coteach with one of our trained BioEYES educators that can be staff, undergraduate, or graduate students. This is just one aspect of the support that teachers get from BioEYES and is likely a factor as to why they return to the program year after year. We have many teachers who have been with the program for 10 or more years. Patel et al.² discusses long-term teacher–scientist collaborations, noting that success is more likely when teachers share the same passion and dedication to the partnership as the outreach program staff. BioEYES has been fortunate enough to meet many teachers who embrace and commit to our partnership. They are the ones who typically carry on the program long term.

Assisting teachers starts before we enter the classroom. New teachers are invited to a 3-h professional development workshop where they learn about zebrafish in research; proper care and handling of the fish; and program specifics regarding content, scope, sequence, and materials. The workshop provides a solid foundation for a lasting partnership. Additional refresher workshops for returning teachers may be held at the host site's discretion. Not only is specific BioEYES-related training offered at these workshops, but time is often allocated for professors, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows to talk about their work. This helps young scientists to build their communication skills with nonscientists and informally enhances teacher familiarity with a wide range of science concepts. Time spent training teachers is important because, as mentioned by Burns (2002), one teacher impacts thousands of students during their teaching career.³

Typically, during the BioEYES week, a BioEYES representative (Outreach Educator, volunteer, or college student) brings all materials to the school and takes care of the set up and clean up of the laboratory. They also stay and coteach 3 of the 5 days (∼9 h of coteaching time). Having a BioEYES educator teach part of the laboratory frees up the classroom teacher to move around the room and engage with students in a way that they would not normally if they had to be the lead educator. Classroom teachers often comment on how much they enjoy having another person in the room, and another voice for the students to listen to. Teachers that do not feel their strength is teaching science gain valuable support and encouragement by having a BioEYES coteacher in the room with them. Teachers that are already strong in the sciences benefit too by gaining zebrafish-specific knowledge and having the opportunity to work with authentic scientific equipment.

After a teacher participates in the BioEYES program for 2 years, they are eligible to become a model teacher. Model teachers deliver the curricula autonomously, using materials loaned by BioEYES staff. Using model teachers allows BioEYES outreach educators to reach more classrooms at the same time, allowing the program to serve more children, and to grow substantially.

Evaluating the Impact

All BioEYES students receive a pre- and a post-test to examine their perception of science, of scientific careers, and of the benefits of doing research. It is important to note that we do not have a direct control group for Project BioEYES. This is because we, along with school district administrators, feel strongly that it would be unfair to withhold this unique educational experience from some students, especially given that our target audience is already underresourced. To account for this, our pre-tests act as a baseline and a means for evaluating growth.

Student pre- and postsurveys are analyzed, using quantitative analysis, to determine:

• (1)Does participation in the BioEYES experience improve grade-specific, standards-aligned content knowledge?
• (2)Does participation in the BioEYES experience change students' attitudes about science and science careers?

We have published a peer-reviewed study on over 19,000 students finding that BioEYES effectively increases students' content knowledge and produces favorable shifts in students' attitudes.⁴ Findings from prior evaluations of the BioEYES program have shown that students exhibited an increase in their science content knowledge (Table 1) as well as more positive attitudes toward science (Table 2) after participating in the program (data from Shuda et al.⁴ used under CC BY license) With regard to teachers, we found that the BioEYES professional development workshop, classroom coteaching experience, and refresher training support teachers in gaining autonomy to teach the program's curricula.⁵

Table 1.

Overall Content Knowledge Change Following BioEYES Exposure

Students assessed	N	% Correct Pre	% Correct Post	Difference	Percent change	p-value (Adjusted)	Significance
Elementary school students, 2010–2015	6496	381.2	565.4	184.2	48.3	<1.0E-38	<0.001
Middle school students, 2010–2015	7829	527.4	667.2	139.8	26.5	<1.0E-38	<0.001
High school students, 2010–2015	5138	426.5	542	115.6	27.1	<1.0E-38	<0.001

Data were preprocessed by summing pre- and post-test values for each student across all test questions. Significance is estimated using a two-sided paired t-test and family-wise error rate corrected using the Bonferroni correction.

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2000520.t001

This table is from Project BioEYES: Accessible Student-Driven Science for K–12 Students and Teachers by Shuda, et al. and used under a CC-BY 4.0 license. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2000520

Table 2.

Overall Attitudes Change Following BioEYES Exposure

Students assessed	N	Average Pre	Average Post	Average change	Net Likert point change	p-value (adjusted)	Significance
Elementary school students, 2011–2015	4781	36.70	37.53	0.83	3981	4.71E-39	<0.001
Middle school students, 2011–2015	6578	35.69	35.99	0.30	1979	8.97E-11	<0.001
High school students, 2011–2015	4084	36.28	36.74	0.45	1843	1.93E-14	<0.001

Data were processed by summing pre- and post-test values for each student across all test questions, except for question A3. Net Likert Point Change is the difference between the sum of all Likert scale values on pre- and post-tests. Significance is estimated using a two-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank test and family-wise error rate-corrected using the Bonferroni correction.

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2000520.t002

Replication

In 2004, after we published our first article in PLOS Biology,⁶ university faculty and other nonprofit education programs began to show an interest in bringing BioEYES to their local schools. This was to be expected, considering that grant agencies are often requiring substantive outreach plans nowadays.⁷ Science faculty are feeling the pressure to engage in K-12 outreach and, as a result, outreach has been expanding over the last decade.⁸

Understanding that a few key elements were needed to achieve a successful program replication (e.g., getting access to zebrafish, forging school partnerships, obtaining funds to purchase classroom materials, and receiving proper training), BioEYES leadership began putting together a plan for replication efforts. Most importantly, they also recognized how the delivery of BioEYES could differ at each site yet it was necessary to still maintain the integrity of the program's principles.

Ensuring that key principles do not get lost during the creative process is “a key issue facing faculty and others developing inquiry-based and innovative curricula.”⁸ BioEYES leadership (Shuda and Farber) established a Memorandum of Understanding to ensure that partners would use the curricula, logos, and trademark as appropriate and share their own impact and findings with the leadership team. The partner sites also agreed to support an onsite professional development training from one of the directors or lead educators from the Philadelphia or Baltimore sites. Partners also received support to fulfill regulatory requirements associated with human subjects (e.g., Institutional Review Board) and the ethical treatment of vertebrate animals (e.g., Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee).

Marketing materials, and consultation about fundraising were also freely shared among BioEYES teams. However, there was autonomy for each replication site to establish BioEYES programming that would be sustainable and impactful at their home institution or program. The result has been different BioEYES models that are embedded in universities' School of Medicine, a volunteer-based scientific society, an undergraduate course, and an after-school/summer program.

Below are different examples of outreach models using BioEYES that our partners have developed. Interestingly, these models were not dictated by the BioEYES leadership but instead, partners were given the flexibility to design a model to fit their local needs. To characterize these model types, the authors asked the leadership of each BioEYES site below to share their stories of how BioEYES became an important initiative and what has led to their success.

Model 1: Embedded in a University School of Medicine

Having the resources and support of a university's medical or science department, with access to graduate student volunteers, has been the BioEYES model that has been around the longest and has led to the most program growth. Our major sites, UPenn, JHU, and Monash, are primary examples of this. Each is headed by a Principal Investigator who holds a faculty-level position, uses zebrafish in their laboratory, has access to a modern zebrafish facility that provides the infrastructure for the daily care and maintenance of the zebrafish, and can provide a relatively small amount of critical administrative support.

In 2021, BioEYES had the opportunity to establish a new site at Mt. Sinai in New York City after the RTW Charitable Foundation provided seed funding for the program's establishment. The donors heard Dr. Shuda, co-PI, speak about the impact of the BioEYES program and wanted to provide this opportunity to students across the city. It is hosted by the Black Family Stem Cell Institute and the Marlow Lab in the Cell Development and Regenerative Biology Department in the Icahn School of Medicine. Dr. Florence Marlow, the head of the Marlow Lab, and Dr. Sarah Millar, the Director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute, are both incredibly passionate about science education outreach. Each was exposed to the program during their time at the UPenn, so they were knowledgeable about the success and impact of established BioEYES programs. Dr. Marlow currently oversees a full-time outreach educator who was hired to deliver the program in schools and provides the fish stocks used in the classroom.

As a new program that was launched in the spring of 2022, BioEYES NYC (Fig. 2) has reached over 1000 students. This site serves both Harlem area elementary and middle school classes, reaching grades 3–8 students. A challenge shared by this site has been the commute from Mt. Sinai to city schools that are required for the delivery of supplies and animals and the inability to use a car.

FIG. 2.

Outreach Educator Ms. Auset Taylor in a New York City middle School.

Model 2: Embedded in an Undergraduate Civic Engagement Course

Around the time that Dr. Martha Marvin started at Williams College as a lecturer and researcher in the Neuroscience Department, she read a New York Times⁹ interview with Steve Farber about BioEYES, whom she knew from graduate school. Dr. Marvin envisioned employing Williams' students as the program instructors during their January Winter Study term when experiential education is one of the main goals.

When approached in 2009 by Dr. Marvin, Shuda and Farber were intrigued by her outreach model. It would give undergraduates the opportunity to explore zebrafish as a research organism, apply genetic concepts, and harness their desire to give back to their local community by delivering the content to area students. As a result, our longest-running partnership outside of the primary BioEYES sites run by Drs. Shuda and Farber was established.

Williams College offers BioEYES as a January Winter Study course (Fig. 3). Participation in one Winter study course is a requirement. Course subjects differ from courses offered during the academic year and often emphasize experiences rather than academic approaches. Students who register for this course are trained in BioEYES during week 1. Those students then become the teachers and facilitate the program at three local elementary schools for the remaining 3 weeks in January. The adult instructors of this course are also on hand to provide support and guidance. This model will only work in January as it is nearly impossible for Williams' students to do the BioEYES program on a daily basis along with their academic schedule during the academic year.

FIG. 3.

Williams College undergraduates teaching in a local elementary School.

Zebrafish are provided and cared for by Dr. Marvin. The Center for Learning in Action originally purchased many supplies and provided teaching materials. The microscopes are borrowed from the Biology Department, which also sponsors the Winter Study Course. Jennifer Swoap and Renee Schiek provide the logistical support coordinating with the participating schools and teachers, organizing transportation, and other related tasks. Having coordinated for several years, Ms. Swoap and Schiek have also learned enough about zebrafish to provide program support in the elementary schools to complement Dr. Marvin's knowledge.

In the first year, the program had just one undergraduate Williams' student, another parent, and two community members to deliver programming. BioEYES Williamstown served grade 4 students from 2010 to 2017, reaching about 80 students per year. Massachusetts then changed the science standards, and it was determined that BioEYES better aligned with the grade 3 curriculum. The program has thus served grade 3 students from 2018 to present. Approximately 110 students participate in BioEYES each year.

This replication has served dual purposes for Williams College and the partnering school. BioEYES provides the content and pedagogical experience for undergraduates to develop research skills and reteach them while aligning to BioEYES's guiding principles to spark an interest in science in local schools. Moreover, it offers undergraduates who may not consider themselves very comfortable with science a fun opportunity to assist local teachers and while doing that enhance their own science literacy.

Model 3: Embedded in a Professional Society

Dr. David Garbe was looking to transition from the labortory bench into informal science education. After becoming the Director of Outreach and Education at the Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research (PSBR), Dr. Garbe adopted BioEYES in 2016 in an effort to expand the program's reach outside of the Philadelphia city limits and to assist with the growing waitlist of teachers who wanted the program.

This collaboration between BioEYES and a professional society—one that was looking to develop an outreach program showcasing authentic biomedical research model organisms while engaging students with a great learning experience—was a win-win. At the beginning, BioEYES educators trained PSBR members and classroom teachers side by side to foster a collaboration and assist with classroom implementation. This cultivated opportunities within the PSBR network to give back to the community and provided teachers with the expertise in animal use and care. It also brought researchers into classrooms.

The partnership has been so successful, PSBR now serves over five times the students they did in 2016 and is producing model teachers in coordination with the BioEYES team. PSBR typically serves middle school classrooms, but also engages elementary and high schools as the interest by teachers has grown. On average, PSBR serves between 1300 and 1500 students each year and partners with the Fox Chase Cancer Center to house and maintain their fish. This growth has led to PSBR hiring an outreach educator. It continues to provide volunteer professionals that act as classroom mentors to help guide the activities.

Model 4: Embedded in an Education Nonprofit

While surfing the web in 2010, Ms. Marlene Reynolds, CEO and Founder of Kids Interested in Technology, Engineering, and Science (KITES), came across an announcement for a teacher workshop being held at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC (the former home institution of BioEYES Baltimore), and sponsored by The USA Science & Engineering Festival. Ms. Reynolds attended the workshop, where she was introduced to what she described as “the dynamic life-science program, Project BioEYES,” and Ms. Reynolds decided that she wanted to bring the program to students in Atlanta, GA to expose underrepresented minority students to the hands-on nature of life science.

In 2011, Ms. Reynolds presented Project BioEYES at a summer camp over the course of 2 weeks to 50 students from the A.W. “Tony” Matthews Boys and Girls Club in Atlanta. Campers age 11–12 (week 1) and age 10 (week 2) had the opportunity to use real scientific tools, such as stereomicroscopes, pipettes, and Petri dishes. The campers learned about the life cycle of the zebrafish, genetics, and cells, and they particularly had fun making a cell model from jello. For the latter, cherries and jello were placed in a Ziploc bag to represent the nucleus, cytoplasm, and cell membrane, respectively. The camp culminated in an awards ceremony whereby each Junior Scientist received a personalized certificate of completion, and a cake decorated with zebrafish and the words “Congratulations, Jr. Scientists!” One child summed up the goal of the program by stating, “We are all scientists, but we just don't know it yet.” Even though the program was a success, it was never repeated at this facility or any other summer camp.

Occasionally BioEYES is requested by a school administrator. Ms. Reynolds then serves as a BioEYES outreach educator and partners with a school's science teacher to bring the program to elementary-level students during in-school time. She delivers the units using the same curricula and framework as a traditional BioEYES Outreach Educator does. Funding for the project is donated by KITES's board of directors.

Ms. Reynolds was also instrumental in arranging for a middle school teacher in the Atlanta Public Schools to be trained as a BioEYES Model Teacher. This involved having the teacher visit BioEYES Baltimore for a week of training on zebrafish care and use as well as the BioEYES curriculum. They were trained at Johns Hopkins University and shadowed a BioEYES educator in a Baltimore City Public school. Ms. Reynolds has since worked with teachers back in Atlanta, obtains the supplies, and coteaches in the classroom.

In addition, Ms. Reynolds recruits KITES volunteers (typically homemakers with college degrees) to deliver introductory lessons in the classroom. For example, the volunteers explain that zebrafish are tropical fish, they discuss what that means with the class, and they show a map of India and the Ganges River to illustrate where the fish originate.

For all programming, adult fish are purchased from the Pet Supermarket. These are used for observational purposes only as Ms. Reynolds could not get the fish to reproduce. Embryos were purchased from Pentair Aquatics and along with some extra adult zebrafish, were also donated by Dr. Ian Shepherd, The Shepherd Lab, at Emory University. After the programming has ended, Ms. Reynolds has had some success at raising the embryos at her house for observation only. She also donates fish to schools to raise.

Approximately 135 students, annually, are served through this partnership (Fig. 4).

FIG. 4.

Student observing zebrafish embryos during the KITES summer program.

The Challenges of Sustaining an Outreach Program

The models outlined in this article speak to the many successes the BioEYES program has experienced during its 21 years of existence. But there are challenges as well. For example, many outreach efforts are entirely reliant on grant and gift funding, which can be difficult and time consuming to obtain. Below we share how to avoid some of the pitfalls, based on our experience.

Diversify your revenue stream

Relying on one grant or source of funding can be a risky bet for an outreach program if you lose that funder. For example, Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana had a robust BioEYES program running from 2007 to 2013. During that time they served a total of 14,684 students. Program staff were reliant on a single grant from the National Science Foundation to fund the program. Once the funding ended, the university department, where the program was housed, struggled to meet the program budget and in the end, the program was eliminated.

Somewhat similarly, Baltimore County Public Schools in Maryland had a BioEYES educator on staff who served 40 elementary schools annually in the district. When the Common Core Standards were being adopted, the program was cut and the funding was shifted to support standards implementation.

Having multiple revenue streams is an investment worth pursuing as it helps program's weather any budget shortfalls. Strategies for funding a sustained program can include seeking revenue from the following:

• Private foundations

• Local organizations

• Local industries

• Local universities and in particular, provost/college deans (a popular approach), academic departments, individual faculty members

  • ○ Campus center/institute (e.g., Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office)

• Individual giving

• Federal grants – You can support “Broader Impact” requirements

• State grants

• Local school system

We have found that local foundation and university support is especially helpful in launching and sustaining an outreach effort. Once a program is established and evaluation data have been collected, you can recruit university faculty to collaborate with you on federal and state grants.

You can also begin to build an individual giving program over time if you have the staff capacity to do so. However, one challenge to this strategy is that nonprofit staff may not have opportunities to mingle with investors or donors, since staff are not connected to the spaces they frequent. This makes it difficult to grow a donor pool. As such, outreach staff need to work very closely with their university's development office to attract donors to their cause. In large universities, this can be tricky since development staff may be focused on only one population (e.g., alumni), and they may also be proprietary about their donor pool.

Seek out sustained institutional support

Having institutional buy-in is crucial for a successful outreach program to sustain itself. We have encountered faculty interest in replicating BioEYES at Georgetown University, for example, but no support from the university's administration. Without their help, the program could not get off the ground. Such aid typically involves a portion of program expenses being paid for by the university or department. But we would argue that having champions in higher positions such as departmental chairs, deans, development staff, and the like who can advocate for the importance of an outreach effort is just as critical as securing a financial safety net. When a program is important to people in high places, it is harder to eliminate!

Have a succession plan

We have also witnessed when students and postdoctoral fellows launch and run an outreach effort, and when they leave the university, the program stops. This has occurred at two BioEYES sites because the graduate student left and no one took it over. Make plans for such a contingency by hiring/installing a replacement before existing outreach staff have left. Or better yet, establish a dedicated position within the department's budget.

Discussion

Although the ways in which BioEYES is implemented from site to site differ, a common theme across each replication model has emerged. Consistent across all BioEYES sites are the two fundamental principles of our international outreach program. How these are achieved look different between the models, but the core values of each effort remain aligned.

The first principle is reinforcing content that students are expected to learn in schools, while focusing on the students BECOMING scientists.

Scientific investigations where students are active learners are more effective at improving students' conceptual knowledge than traditional/passive teaching strategies.^10–13 It does not matter if BioEYES is implemented in a traditional school environment, during the summer months, or as an after-school club, when the program is set up to allow students to explore something new, the spark can be ignited. Marlene Reynolds shared her experience with BioEYES as part of an after-school program:

“I vividly recall a reaction from a young man at the A. W. “Tony” Matthews Boys and Girls Club. It was after lunch, and he was torn between joining the class or playing football with his friends. I convinced him to join the BioEYES session and he did. He took one look at the embryos under the microscope and jumped backward letting out a squeal while his eyes filled with amazement. For the rest of the afternoon, that student decided to forego playing football with his friends and became an active participant in the BioEYES program.”

Studies have shown a breadth of positive outcomes for such project-based learning (PBL) experiences, including comparable or increased gains in content knowledge, positive attitude changes, improvements on conceptual understanding, problem-solving abilities, communication skills, teamwork, and analysis.^14,15 PBL is particularly well suited for the complexity of scientific processes and procedures.¹⁴ As our collaborator at Mount Sinai (Model 1) shared:

“The program provides students the opportunity of seeing themselves as the stewards of their academic experience. I think it is very important to allow the students to be the ones to pose the question and interact with live animals directly, without the barrier of a screen or the demonstration being reserved for “adults.”

The “special sauce” of BioEYES is its project-based framework that aligns with these characteristics.

The second principle is establishing trust and buy-in from collaborating teachers and partners.

Collaboration with teachers has been a primary reason for our sustainability. Involvement of teachers is crucial to the success of outreach programs. “Teachers are the direct gatekeepers of access to students…. Greater incentives need to be given to teachers to encourage their participation and cooperation with outreach programs.”¹⁶

This is evident in our interview with Laura Reid, Monash University Engagement and Outreach Coordinator and BioEYES coordinator. Monash has been a BioEYES site since 2010 and is another example of a partnership embedded in a university School of Medicine (Model 1). Ms. Reid shared:

BioEYES has allowed us to engage with teachers and, with particular reference to those teaching primary aged students, work with them to demonstrate how science can be delivered in an exploratory manner. This is particularly pertinent as our interactions with teachers have yielded conversations that demonstrate many feel ill equipped in the area of science, with some admitting that they had deliberately avoided teaching the necessary science curriculum for fear of not being able to answer the students' questions. Through the introduction of a student-centered, hands-on program such as BioEYES, we have been able to demonstrate to educators that science can be exploratory, that the teachers don't have to know all the “right” answers, and that mutual discovery is part of the scientific process that excites students.

“Achieving true science–teacher collaboration is a stepwise process including gradual build-up of trust and mutual recognition of common grounds.”¹⁷ As Dr. David Garbe of PSBR (Model 3) noted, “wins” for BioEYES are that “teachers want us to come back every year…, and more and more teachers want to work with us to deliver this lesson.” The outreach team understands that the connection to the teacher is vital to sustaining our program in schools. Having outreach educators in the classroom alongside teachers for the first few years builds strong relationships as well as the pedagogical and scientific support for teachers. The time and money spent on the outreach educator and teacher collaboration has proven to be the most important factor in a long-term outreach initiative, no matter the model. This is exemplified by several of our sites, (Penn, PSBR, and JHU), having a waitlist of teachers. These teachers join the program when existing BioEYES teachers “graduate” to model teachers, meaning they deliver the curriculum without the support of an outreach educator but still receive all the supplies and equipment for free.

Implementation support can also happen through volunteerism. Volunteers are often graduate or undergraduate students or member volunteers that are part of professional societies. This then frees up outreach educators' time to begin working with new teachers in the program.

Williams College (Model 2) also exemplifies how it is not only the teacher who develops the confidence and excitement for teaching science because of BioEYES. Dr. Marvin and her team shared, “The Williams model allows college students to engage in local elementary schools. The elementary students look up to the Williams students and enjoy the interactions. Many of the [undergraduate] students later choose to work at various jobs in the same schools as a result of a good experience with BioEYES.”

Another benefit that has been shared by several BioEYES sites, is that the outreach educator and teacher collaborate to build a solid content and pedagogical foundation for partnering teachers. Aligning the BioEYES content with Next Generation Science Standards and district instruction ensures that the classroom experience supports what educators are asked to teach. When requested, BioEYES's at Penn, JHU, and Monash help new sites decide on the appropriate grade levels based on local school curricula and work with school administration to ensure that the experience compliments and reinforces how science is taught. This is critical to the success of BioEYES working in schools and is not something that science professionals have the skills (or bandwidth) to do alone.

As noted above, one major difference between the replication models is the size of the efforts. We recognize that each site has their own goals and capacity to fulfill them. Having access to zebrafish and/or the size of the zebrafish facility can determine how often and how many lessons can be taught. Each site is responsible for complying with animal use protocols at their institution. However, our sites at UPenn and JHU often help other sites in finding a reliable zebrafish source, often through the Zfin website and provide guidance in obtaining Animal Ethics Committee approvals. Some sample material is included as Supplementary 1. Although BioEYES could be done without live fish through simulations, the last 20 years have proven that students' interaction and ownership of the live fish and their experiment is both memorable and impactful. It is worth the investment.

Is outreach important or not? Everyone seems to like successful outreach programs and think they are important for our children and society, but they can just as easily be seen as expendable and vulnerable to external pressures. We argue that it is critical for stakeholders to understand this and to advocate for such programs and for their sustainability at all times. Not doing so leaves a program vulnerable to extinction. It takes a lot of effort to launch and run an outreach program, let alone replicate it, all of which is for naught if a program ceases to exist. The true losers in such a scenario are the participants; in our case that includes underrepresented children and teachers who love BioEYES and benefit so much from it.

Conclusion

BioEYES has experienced many challenges and triumphs over the past 20 years. We successfully pivoted to virtual learning during the pandemic; set up outreach sites in new universities as the cofounders found new homes; secured over ten million dollars in institutional, federal, foundation, and private support; and endured a devastating loss of an outstanding outreach educator, Terrone Jasper. We have teachers who piloted BioEYES with us in the early days that are still program partners and recruited many new teachers who have helped us innovate our curricula. There are students who talk about BioEYES in their high school application to other STEM programs, discussing how the zebrafish made them think science was interesting, cool, and mysterious. For at least one BioEYES student scientist, it turned into a career: We welcome Joshua Kouassi as a former BioEYES student and new BioEYES educator at UPenn. He is now teaching the same BioEYES lessons in Philadelphia that he remembers doing as a young student and budding scientist. Here is to the next twenty years!

Authors' Contributions

J.R.S.: Conceptualization, Methodology. J.R.S., V.G.B., T.M.N., J.M.D., A.M.T.: Data curation, Writing––Original draft preparation. V.G.B. and A.M.T.: Visualization and Investigation. J.R.S.: Supervision. V.G.B. and S.A.F.: Writing––Reviewing and Editing.

Disclosure Statement

There are no relevant financial or nonfinancial competing interests to report.

Funding Information

This work was supported in part by the National Institute of Health grants R01ES028206–05 (J.R.S.); R01DK093399–09 (S.A.F.); The University of Pennsylvania (J.R.S., T.M.N., J.M.D.); The Carnegie Institution for Science Endowment (S.A.F., V.G.B.); The Johns Hopkins University (S.A.F., V.G.B.); RTW Charitable Foundation (A.M.T.); and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (A.M.T.).

Supplementary Material

Supplementary Data