"Look, Mom! It's the Science Ladies."
Beakers, Filters, and Big Dreams: Maine’s Mobile BioLab & Scientists Inspire Trenton Students and Others Around the State
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Choco-Latté Café.
TRENTON—Sitting at a lab table inside a mobile science lab next to her classmates and in front of highly expensive science equipment and wide screens live streaming her work, Breanna Lewis smiled.
The seventh-grader at Trenton Elementary School had just worked on figuring out the turbidity of a water sample.
“I love this,” she said. “I like doing the science in here. It’s so cool. I’ve done science before, but not like this.”
This was the Maine Mobile BioLab where Brianna and her classmates got to participate in real hands-on science with two scientists: Heather Carlisle and Anna Stehlik.
“Yesterday, you guys were research scientists,” Carlisle told them as she stood in a white lab coat, protective blue gloves on her hands.
Today, they were environmental engineers.
“Yes!” a seventh grader at one of the lab tables murmured. There was a rising echo of yeses.
The enthusiasm and the attention didn’t wane as the group worked on ph-levels and turbidity and filtering the water. They worked with PH meters and turbidity sensors, building a filter, asking their teacher, Joshua Morse for help and praise.
First the Trenton students observed their water samples.
“It smells like sea camp.”
“It smells funky.”
“It smells like funky sea camp.”
Mr. Morse, sitting on a stool nearby, laughed a bit with them. He said the opportunity for them to do hands-on science with tools and expertise with real scientists like Carlisle and Stehlik is an exceptional experience. It’s an experience outside of the classroom with tools that small schools could never financially provide themselves.
“The Maine Mobile BIOLAB is part of Educate Maine’s larger strategy to connect students and educators with career pathways within the life sciences sector and develop a larger and career ready workforce in Maine through educational investments,” the lab’s website explains.
“They can see themselves doing this,” Stehlik said.
That’s a big deal to her and Carlisle and to the kids they get to engage with science for a week.
“I love it,” Stehlik admitted.
In a field trip to the parking lot, real-world kids get to perform science every day for a week to deal with real-world problems. That might be glucose intolerance or water filtration.
“We really want kids to see themselves in these careers,” Stehlik said.
It’s part of creating and inspiring the next generation of scientists, medical technicians, researchers, geologists. They were just in Hope, Maine. After Trenton they headed to Carmel and then Oxford. The school chooses the schedule and picks a curriculum from a menu that’s specifically tailored for fifth-through-eighth graders.
Once, when Carlisle and Stehlik were in another Maine town, they were having dinner at a local BBQ restaurant and were swamped by kids and their parents.
“Look, Mom! It’s the science ladies,” they said as they dragged their parents to the scientists’ table.
“I had peaked professionally.” Stehlik laughed.
“It’s fun. It’s chill,” said Lorilei Shepherd a moment after she took a ph level of her sample.
Luciana Pickering agreed.
It’s fun. It’s chill. It’s more than that, too.
“We want to engage kids, but we want to do more than just have them say, ‘This is fun. This is great,’” Carlisle said.
It’s also about workforce development, she said.
You can go to school for two years in state and have no debt for some jobs in the science and technology fields, the women said, depending on the field. Phlebotomy training in Lewiston is free for some. There are earn-to-learn programs throughout the state in multiple medical fields.
“You don’t have to go to school forever and be a doctor. There’s a two-year program or a four-year program depending on how deep you want to go. We really want kids to see themselves in these fields,” Carlisle said.
A lot of them, sitting in the lab, said they could.
According to a paper by Science is US, “From its legacy industries to new technologies—STEM is increasingly driving economic growth and prosperity in Maine. The portion of the state’s economy driven by STEM grew between 2017 and 2021 with STEM directly contributing $6 billion more to Maine’s GDP. That rate of growth is notable because at over 26%, it outpaces the national average of 23%.”
In Maine, there are more than 278,500 people who work in science, medicine, math, technology, and engineer fields. That’s a third of the workforce. More than half of those people do not have bachelor’s degrees.
People working in science are scientists like those at The Jackson Laboratory and MDI Biological Laboratory, but they are also nurses, marine biologists, ironworkers, foresters, electricians, lab techs, and veterinarians.
According to a piece by Ben Gilman and Rachel Kerestes that first appeared in the Portland Press Herald, in Maine, “these STEM positions generate higher incomes – $87,000 a year on average, while non-STEM workers earn $38,000, which creates obvious benefits for local economies.”
“I think science education is so important because science is life, it is the world. It runs everything we know, we’re familiar with. It is the past, the present, the future. It explains so many things and it is important to understand science and learn about science so we know how the world works and so we can understand all the different things that go into so many different careers, and different processes so we can survive and flourish,” Stehlik said.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Maine Healthcare Training Resources and Programs
The Maine Mobile Lab exists due to sponsors such as Educate Maine, the Bioscience Association of Maine, The Roux Institute (Northeastern University), Learning Undefeated, FlowCam, University of Maine System, University of New England, MaineHealth, IDEXX, Live + Work in Maine, Maine Department of Education, and advocacy of the following: US Senator Angus King, US Senator Susan Collins, Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson.
Photos: Unless otherwise specified, Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story.
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Thanks for such a wonderful story highlighting our program! Such a well written piece.
This is wonderful and reminds me of my NYC visit long ago with folks who launched the BioBus mobile learning lab! https://www.biobus.org/