Changing the way we think about life

About Us

About lifeedu.org

lifeedu (pronounced, life e-d-u) is a 501 c(3) nonprofit organization established for the creation, production, and distribution of educational materials on DNA, genetics, and modern biotechnology for middle school, high school, general undergraduate and the general public.

The organization was founded, with Pfizer Inc. as the charter Sponsor, to meet a growing educational need that is fundamental now to the life sciences and the general education of our society. The Founding Board consists of members from the biotech industry, including Pfizer, as well as leading academic institutions in both Connecticut and Rhode Island. This project would be in collaboration with a number of academic institutions including URI, Yale and Cornell and their affiliates as subcontractors to lifeedu.

Over the last four years we have piloted a new course that was offered at both Connecticut College and the University of Rhode Island called The Way We Work With Life: Issues in Biotechnology. The success of that course has stimulated the concept that these materials and this format represent a platform for generating educational materials that can be used by K-16 teachers and for teaching current concepts in biotechnology. In addition this material has proven useful for a broad target audience including the general public and industry staff. We have received significant positive feedback that these materials would be very useful to science and non-science staff in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries generally.

The lectures for the course had been all developed as power point presentations, which with the help of undergraduate students who were so enthusiastic about the course, were organized into CDs.

In addition, we have conducted workshops and focus groups specifically for High School Teachers and have presented to numerous High School general assemblies. These experiences have made clear the need for a general course for High School Teachers that will provide them with sufficient information and materials they can use to integrate these topics into the existing curricular requirements. We have also learned that the topics addressed in the various fields touch on many cross curricular issues and therefore lend themselves to exposure in somewhat unexpected combinations; such as Social Studies and Biology for discussions on GM crops.

This course is intended for K-16 Teachers, General Undergraduate, and the General Public, including; Science and Non-Science Industry Staff, Government officials and their staff, Investors and Business Representatives and the generally interested public.