Newborns weighing just a pound were curled up in incubators at the neonatal intensive care unit of Crouse Hospital in Syracuse. Colgate biology professor Ken Belanger and about 10 of his students could see the babies’ heartbeats through the poorly developed transparent skin of their backs.
The students spoke with professionals who gave textbook topics a real-life edge. Nurses at the Crouse unit often deal with undersized newborns from a multiple birth, sometimes to a mother who underwent in vitro fertilization. Those infants can be at high risk of serious developmental problems.
“It’s a real eye-opener for the students. It’s an eye-opener for me,” said Belanger.
The March 25 visit to Crouse and an earlier stop the same day at a Syracuse fertility clinic were meant to expand the students’ examination of the science of human development and the myriad social and ethical issues that surround it.
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The afternoon excursion for the Cells and Human Development class was funded through the Beyond Colgate program, which started in the fall of 2001. The program looks to build faculty-student engagement, which is one of the primary goals of the university’s strategic plan, and bolster students’ knowledge of a particular subject.
More than 40 trips have been conducted this academic year, said Jill Tiefenthaler, the associate dean of faculty who oversees the program. Professors have taken students to a wide range of places, including the Fenimore House Museum in Cooperstown; Mansion House in Oneida; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Broadway shows, Ellis Island, and art galleries in New York City; the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.; Institute of Optics in Rochester; and the Zen Buddhist monastery in Livingston Manor.
Kezia Page, assistant professor of English, took her New Immigrant Voices class to New York City for a day last November. The class is studying immigrant literature.
About 15 of her students went on a walking tour of the Lower East Side, guided by a New York University graduate student. They strolled through Chinatown, Little Italy and other ethnic neighborhoods.
“It was great for students to see in real time what we’ve been studying. What immigrant New York looks like today,” said Page.
She also arranged a tour of Brooklyn. They walked through a West Indian neighborhood and one that is home to Hasidic Jews that bumps against it. Diversity was on display in nearly every brownstone window, giving students a street-level sampling of ethnicity and bringing to life a novel they had been studying in class, “Brown Girl, Brownstones,” by Paule Marshall.
“The landscape of New York tells a lot about the immigrant experience,” said Page.
Just as importantly, Page had a chance to learn about the 15 students who went on the trip that Sunday. A few of the students had never been to New York City before, and she felt “privileged and happy” to be able to take them there.
Talking with them during the bus rides to and from the Big Apple and sharing a meal at a Jamaican restaurant created a new comfort level between her and the students, said Page,
Belanger echoed that.
“You are able to interact with students on a level with these trips that you can’t in the classroom,” he said. “We’re all learning during the trip, with doctors talking to us and nurses taking us around. We’re all brought to the same level; it’s not me ‘professing’ at them in the classroom.”
There also was the benefit of sitting down and talking with students during a shared meal, which for Belanger’s group was at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Q restaurant in downtown Syracuse.
“The opportunity to sit down and have a meal together allows you to interact in a way that you can’t in the classroom. You really learn what they are interested in. You really learn about them.”
What Belanger hopes the students learn from the trip is the complexity of the issues they are studying in class.
He said Dr. Robert J. Kiltz, director of the CNY Fertility Center that the students visited, is great about discussing the range of ethical issues surrounding infertility.
Belanger explained that there are people who believe that couples who can’t have children naturally should accept that; it’s God’s will. Others say hormonal treatments or in vitro fertilization are reasonable ways to give a woman a chance to have a baby. Adoption also is discussed as an option.
Students can see how the process of in vitro fertilization works. Two to three embryos are inserted in a woman’s womb with the hope that one will undergo implantation and development, said Belanger. The process can result in multiple births and premature newborns with serious health problems.
And many embryos end up not being used at all. Should they be used for stem cell research, and should the federal government regulate that? Should they be stored? How should they be disposed of?
“These are ‘hot-button’ subjects. (Kiltz) is just fantastic talking with the students about them. He thinks about these issues all the time,” said Belanger.
Tim O’Keeffe
Office of University Communications
315.228.6634