AP Research senior Christina Chow is spending her year-long research project examining the presence of bacteria on various tables in classrooms around the school.
AP Research gives students like Chow an opportunity to choose a research topic that they are interested in and spend their class time working on it. “One of the main ideas behind AP Research and AP Capstone classes is that the student can pick topics they are interested in and learn how to do high level research and writing about that,” AP Research teacher Michelle Hanson said.
The school’s DNA Resource Center gives them a chance to replicate a real-world experiment through field testing and through evaluating their results. The DNA Resource Center is run by Dr. Carlos Offut.
Chow is working with other students in the DNA lab on her project. They plan to compare the levels of bacteria on a table cleaned with disinfectant to a table without any disinfectant. “We made some gels, went around to different classes, put the gel in the incubator and then bacteria grew,” senior Emmelyn Bikuri said.
AP Research students have just begun to write their paper, specifically the method section, which details how the research is going to be completed. They have also begun collecting the data that they are going to use in their paper. For this project, that includes going around to classrooms and testing the bacteria on the tables. “We have currently just started working on the outline for our project,” Bikuri said.
Once the results are finalized, students will be able to read a report about the levels of bacteria in the school and how often the school needs to be cleaned in order to minimize that bacteria. By taking this project on, Chow is using her role as a student doing advanced research to take a deeper look into the levels of cleanliness inside the school and how the cleanliness or lack of it affects students.
The topic of the school’s cleanliness can be controversial, with the recent news about the school’s renovation being pushed back and the option of moving to another school instead. “What really stood out to me was how uncomfortable people feel when they hear the topic because it’s something we all experience every day in this building and I don’t think we think about it. Christina has made it very clear that we should be thinking about it,” Hanson said.
Members of the school community have advocated for at least a decade, saying that this school needs to be invested in. Recently signs have been posted around the school with sayings such as “Save Wootton” or “Say no to option H.” Through these efforts, community members are saying they would rather have their school invested in with time and money to keep it clean and safe, rather than moving them into another building. Other community members feel that moving to another building is more desirable.
