Southeast High School students taking Anatomy & Physiology and Pharmacology are in the final stages of preparing projects for a regional competition to be held in Iola on Tuesday.  It is the first of what the district hopes is many competitions and events for Southeast students interested in the health and medical fields to show off their talents.

At a Special Meeting on October 23 the USD 247 Southeast Board of Education approved a request to form a chapter of HOSA – Health Occupations Students of America, a student-led association of Future Health Professionals that is endorsed by U.S. Department of Education.  HOSA is a support organization for the BioMedical Pathway at Southeast.

“HOSA is a student organization that is the equivalent of the FFAA for the Agriculture Science classes,” said USD 247 Public Information Officer Chris Wilson.  “As our superintendent put it to the board, while classes are for academics, the student organization is the ‘fun stuff’ like competitions that motivate kids to take the classes.”

With overall enrollment declining and with a tight budget a board member questioned the timing of the creation of the HOSA chapter at Southeast.

“As was explained at the board meeting, the more students who take core courses in a Pathway the more funding the district receives,” Wilson said.  “If HOSA can entice more students to try out those classes that is more funding for the district and hopefully we can encourage more kids to go into those much needed medical fields.  That is after all the school board’s goal – to get kids interested in classes they may not normally take and we are seeing a lot of interest in the BioMedical Pathway.”

Sara Sutton is the BioMedical Pathway instructor and when she started teaching at Southeast High School the Anatomy & Physiology typically only had three to five students in it.  This year they have 18 – the maximum allowed in the class.

“I have a lot of kids that are interested in it – we added Pharmacology last year and I have nine kids in that class, which is actually quite a few for the size of school that we have when it’s a new class,” said Sutton.  “This particular Pathway helps them prepare for medical related fields – anything from veterinary science to doctors to nurses to physical therapy.”

Southeast’s BioMedical Pathway is in only its second year and being a member of HOSA provides Southeast students opportunities to compete for scholarships at the state and national level, as well as participate in multiple competitions in areas such as medical terminology, veterinary science, and prefix and suffix text.

Tuesday’s Night at the Lab is just one of those competitions.  It is a program put on by the University of Kansas in coordination with HOSA that combines competition with exposing students to health related fields.  One regional winner in Iola will advance to the state competition on November 20 at the KU Medical Center in Kansas City.  Students spend a couple of weeks researching a question they are given, make a professional science fair board and do a short presentation over the topic.

“We’re all excited about doing the research project, and as science majors when they go on to College Biology, Chemistry, Physics, they are going to have to do research projects like this,” said Sutton.  This is something that will prepare them even for Master’s, when you’re looking at journal articles and you’re looking at data, interviewing professionals – getting out there in the community and finding people and putting that whole research project together and then presenting it.”

Last year Southeast participated in the competition but only worked on their project outside of the classroom.  This year Sutton incorporated the project into her regular coursework.

“Now I know what to expect – we’ve kind of gotten our feet wet,” said Sutton.  “Students are in the design phase and are creating their science boards that will be used to display all of the research they have generated over the last couple of weeks.”

This year’s questions cover the main topic of Cancer.  Southeast is taking three teams, who each have their own question:  “What is Myeloma?”, ” What are the Effects of Ultra Violet Light in the Risk of Cancer?” and “What are the Effects of Alcohol use in the Risk for Cancer?”

Sutton’s husband is the Agriculture teacher at Southeast and is the sponsor for the Southeast Chapter of Future Farmers of America, which has regular opportunities to showcase what students have learned.  Sutton said now it’s time to show off what her students can do.

“It’s nice because I’m competitive and I’ve always been jealous of, like FFA and FBLA, that they get to go on their competitions and so now it’s like I want to show what we have too,” Sutton said.  “I really think the BioMedical Pathway is really helping those students who want to go into the medical field.  I wish I had more hours in the day to offer more classes.”

Sutton currently teaches General Biology to freshmen, Anatomy & Physiology, Pharmacology and BioMedical Career Exploration, which are in alignment with Common Core and Next Generation Science standards.

“It’s really preparing them to go on and be successful in college,” Sutton said.  “(It helps them) get that background information so that, when they get to their upper level classes for their medical career they will have that groundwork done here at the high school level.”

Sutton is also hoping to have more collaboration with the Agriculture and Health teachers at Southeast to develop a cross-curriculum that gives students more opportunities to learn about real world applications.  As one example, Sutton said that while the Anatomy & Physiology course is all about the human anatomy the same concepts carryover to animals.

“If you know about the cardiovascular system and the muscular system it’s the same in animals as well,” Sutton said.  “We have talked about that (cross-curriculum) because Biology and Ag go hand in hand, and I actually have an Ag degree – it was my first degree.”

“That’s one reason I really love Biology because you can look out the window and see it and the kids can get a real world grasp for it,” Sutton said.

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