Posted 4:07 p.m. Thursday, July 25, 2024
New pedagogy, partnerships enhance student learning
By Tristin Studer, graduate student
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. And one of the biggest contributing factors is heart attacks, medically termed “myocardial infarctions” (MI).
After an MI, the heart is damaged and unable to heal itself. Figuring out the “why” behind this lack of recovery would lead to a healthier heart for those who have suffered an MI. But currently, there is no known way for the heart to fix itself.
Enter: Dr. Caitlyn O’Meara and her team of researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
Through the investigation of signaling pathways, O’Meara has been working with mouse models to better understand what is driving this lack of repair. Interestingly, she found that newborn mice were able to repair their heart after inducing an MI. However, as the mice aged into adulthood, the ability to self-heal was lost.
Naturally, O’Meara’s next question was, “What is causing this to happen?”
O’Meara and her team identified a dramatic decrease in an important immune system molecule called interleukin 13 (IL13) in adult mouse hearts compared to newborn mouse hearts after an MI. This indicated that IL13 might send signals to macrophages, an immune cell, to aid in heart repair.
This work was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigations earlier this year, in an article titled, “IL13 promotes functional recovery of the heart muscle after a myocardial infraction via direct signaling to macrophages”.
O’Meara presented her research at a seminar in late April in the UWL Student Union, which attracted many biology, microbiology, and exercise and sport science faculty and students.
The seminar also provided content for Jaclyn Wisinski’s Cellular Signaling (BIO483/583) class and Dan Bretl’s Microbiology Symposium: Research Deconstruction (MIC460).
Wisinski and Bretl both use the “Research Deconstruction” pedagogy to expose undergraduate and graduate students to high-level, cutting-edge research.
As part of this teaching strategy, students might initially be overwhelmed by the intentionally challenging level of the seminar. However, over subsequent class meetings, students break down the seminar to understand the background, hypothesis, results and conclusions.
Wisinski is using this pedagogy as a culminating lesson and project in her Cellular Signaling course. Bretl has developed a new course, initially taught as a symposium in microbiology, that will be offered each spring.
In Bretl’s course, the entire semester is devoted to Research Deconstruction. This spring, the students listened to and deconstructed three seminars in total, including a seminar from Dr. Carly Mascari (from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical College of Wisconsin) and Zach Tritz (from the Department of Microbiology at UWL).
After the deconstruction, when students are feeling more confident about the research, the seminar speaker is invited back to answer student questions and brainstorm future directions.
This pedagogy is part of a larger and growing educational partnership between UWL and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Exposing faculty and students to cutting-edge research from scientists at the medical college — along with using the Research Deconstruction pedagogy — will broaden career paths for UWL students, enhance research collaborations for faculty and promote both UWL and the College of Science & Health.
Both Wisinski and Bretl will continue this pedagogy in their respective courses. Please contact them for any questions about their courses, the Research Deconstruction pedagogy or interest in presenting your research as a seminar.