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Graduate students from Cornell University presented a workshop on foodborne outbreak investigation on November 2, 2014 at STANYS conference in Rochester, NY. 14 science teachers attended the workshop. In this interactive workshop, teachers were introduced to general steps involved in an outbreak investigation along with specific materials that could be tailored to their classroom settings. Learning objectives were also developed and communicated to science teachers to emphasize that the workshop content is consistent with the Next-generation science standards.  Materials for the workshop can be found here.

The Department of Food Science at Cornell University hosted a one-week workshop for middle and high school science teachers July 7-11, 2014. Within that workshop, the food safety lab led a teaching module entitled “Food Safety Detectives” for 10 teachers. The module started out with a mock foodborne outbreak scenario. The teachers were able to deduce the likely source and cause of the outbreak, and used this information to guide their sample collection, which consisted of plating food samples on growth medium and assessing any microbial growth. The next day results were reviewed and followed by in-depth discussions on how the teachers could bring these activities to the classroom.

The department of Food Science at Cornell University hosted a workshop titled “Food Safety Detectives” through the Cornell Institute of Biology Teachers (CIBT) on April 26, 2014. In this 1.5 h workshop, 16 teachers from NY state played the role of foodborne pathogen epidemiologists to investigate an unusual number of potentially linked gastrointestinal illnesses using the combination of epidemiological and microbiological information. The workshop activity was followed with a discussion on ways to improve the activity for an effective implementation in a classroom setting.