South Central High School Teachers Visit ECU Pharmaceutical Skills Lab

Teachers and the principal from South Central High School in Winterville toured ECU’s Pharmaceutical Skills Lab June 9. (Contributed photo)

A tour of the pharmaceutical skills lab at East Carolina University on June 9 helped 10 South Central High School teachers and their principal, Julie Cary, understand how ECU prepares students for careers in the pharmaceutical industry. The lab is housed in ECU’s Department of Chemistry in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences.

The educators plan to share this information in their own classrooms to explain how subjects taught in high school can be relevant to the students’ communities and future careers.

“Teachers need to be aware of what is happening in industry, post-secondary education, business and the arts in their communities in order to relate course content to relevant examples for their students. This is one of our major goals in bringing teachers to the lab,” said Elizabeth Martin, instructional coach at South Central High School.

“We hope our teachers will connect with the community in a deeper way. We also hope South Central can forge relationships with post-secondary education and industry that lead to substantive relationships between these key stakeholders,” she said.

The South Central teachers spent the 2014-15 academic year exploring the topic of innovation in education. Through the assistance of ECU Vice Chancellor Ted Morris and Wayne Godwin, director of ECU’s Innovation Lab, the educators have explored the human design process, visited the ECU Innovation Lab, learned about the Annual Middle School Innovators Academy and planned and created their own in-house Innovation Lab.