From Panda Thumbs to Cichlid Jaws 
September 2006

Nikolai Curtis's interest in biology has taken him from a four year stint working at Zoo Atlanta (he was there when those pandas arrived) to a classroom at Grady High School in Atlanta. This summer he added a new experience to his list: a summer interning with Dr. Todd Streelman at Georgia Tech's biology department.

"I would say that my action plan was inspired by Todd's research," he said in a telephone interview on September 7. "What he does could be a little bit out of the range of the students' comprehension. So the goal is to get the kids interested in general."

He did his internship through CEISMC's Georgia Intern-Fellowships for Teachers Program, which places teachers into paid internships in a variety of research, public science, and business environments. As part of the program, Curtis has created an Action Plan wherein he outlines the way he will bring the experience back to the classroom. "The challenge is to create something where students will get more out of it and be excited about it while also meeting the georgia performance standards," he said.

Curtis also learned about the general spirit of science. "I try to stress to my students that there are no failures in pure research. When you think you're on the right track and all of a sudden you're not, you have to look at that failure as a turning point that will lead you into a new direction."

He feels especially positive about the GIFT summer experience. "My thing is the GIFT experience is a fantastic opportunity for teachers to get out of that old mode of sitting around during the summer and suffering the brain drain. If there's something that you're interested in GIFT has so many different outlets."

Download Nikolai Curtis's Action Plan here.