THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605290122
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SHIRLEY BRINKLEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 80 lines
IN AN EFFORT to bring ``real world'' biology to her students, Sue Draper soon will pack her bags to travel to two summer institutes.
A teacher at Nansemond River High School, Draper recently received a grant to attend the Medical University of South Carolina to study bio-chemistry technology.
In mid-July, both Draper and John Patterson, a biology instructor at Paul D. Camp Community College, will attend the PACT Institute at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. PACT is a National Science Foundation project to link teachers with industry.
``A teacher has to stay right up-to-date,'' Draper said, ``because I may get up in the morning and hear on the radio that what's printed in the textbook is obsolete.''
Through the PACT project, Draper, 58, will be among 25 teachers from throughout the country who will learn to convey to high school students biology and chemistry skills for the workplace.
``There needs to be an awareness that there are jobs that do not require a college education, yet they require the applications of biology, such as testing soil and water samples,'' she said. ``Even if you serve on a planning commission, you need this information.''
From her studies at the Medical University of South Carolina, Draper will be able to teach molecular biology and medical techniques required in the workplace, as well.
``My students already are doing DNA fingerprinting,'' she said.
Draper teaches applied, or ``hands-on,'' biology to 10th-graders and dual-credit biology to juniors and seniors, who receive high school credit as well as eight hours of college credit.
Draper's travels this summer will not be the first time she has applied for special grants to update her knowledge. Last fall, she participated in a federal program that provides hands-on experience in scientific research aboard government-owned ships.
Called ``Teacher at Sea,'' the program pairs educators with scientific and survey missions carried by the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on board ships operated by NOAA's commissioned service.
Draper boarded a research vessel in the Aleutian Islands with a research team of nine scientists from the Department of Fisheries and NOAA labs out of Seattle. They cruised for 10 days in the Bering Sea and studied the food chain of the juvenile pollock, a fish widely used in commercial products.
``When you buy a fish sandwich or a frozen fillet of fish, that's what you're buying,'' Draper said. ``It's a delicious fish, and scientists are constantly monitoring the fish population.''
Draper also was able to work with scientists studying the fur seal at the National Marine Mammal Research Center on a remote island at the edge of the Arctic Ocean.
``I can't tell you how enriching it was,'' Draper said. ``I brought back the expertise I had gained and samples that I shared with my students.''
As an outgrowth of their study of the food chain, two of Draper's senior students have received grants from NOAA to study aboard a NOAA research vessel out of Woods Hole, Mass., for 12 days this summer.
A native of Senatobia, Miss., Draper received a bachelor's degree in biology at Harding Univiversity in Searcy, Ark., and a master's degree at Memphis University in Memphis, Tenn. She is a candidate to receive a Certificate of Advanced Studies at Old Dominion University in August.
While Draper was a student in Memphis, she met her husband, Dr. Joseph Draper. They moved to Suffolk in 1964, where he practices optometry.
The couple has three grown children, Lynn Draper of Richmond, Allison D. Gant of Burlington, N.C., and Joseph Draper III, who is in his second year at the Chiropractic School in Houston, Texas. There are also two grandchildren.
Draper taught school in Tennessee and Oklahoma before taking an 18-year break to raise her family. She resumed her teaching career at the former John Yeates High School in 1987 and then transferred to Nansemond River High School when it opened in 1990.
``I'm updating my knowledge with cutting-edge research,'' Draper said. ``I want my students to know this is not information from a textbook to write down to study for a test. This is information for the workplace. A high school student today requires and expects to have a teacher that's well informed. The grants provide one avenue of being able to do that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Nansemond River High School students Stacey Green, left, and Amy
Williams work on a biology project assigned by teacher Sue Draper,
foreground. by CNB