During the Spring break in March of 2010, the TCIC again hosted students from the CVTC Nanobiotechnology course for a one day workshop in “Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering”. This is the 3 rd year in a row that this important event has taken place with a total of approximately 40 CVTC students and staff from Eau Claire being given an introduction to applied micro/nanobiotechnology at UWRF. This year, the students spent the day working with Dr. Lyden and UWRF undergraduate student, Tim Morris who served as an excellent teaching assistant for the effort. These primarily engineering student were introduced to key concepts of cell culture, stem cell biology and tissue engineering during their visit. The day resulted in CVTC students producing artificial tissue samples of their own which will be grown here at UWRF for 3 weeks and then transfered to Eau Claire for further processing and SEM evaluation by the students as a course capstone activity. Again this year, the effort generated interest from at least one student who will be joining the TCIC this summer for an internship and will then matriculate to UWRF in the Fall as a Biotechnology student.In addition to the annual workshops, the TCIC and CVTC Nanotechnology programs are also working in collaboration with the UW-Stout Genomic Training and Analysis Center to develop a nanobiotechnology workforce grant to enhance and/or spur the economic development of western Wisconsin. In this regard the three programs have and are collaborating on NSF curriculum development grants which this year included an NSF Advanced Technology Education proposal. Further submissions are planned in near future as well.
