8 | theLAKER campus happenings Anatomage: A new tool for teaching anatomy FLCC is piloting one of the latest medical education technologies – called an Anatomage table – to help students in health care programs master anatomy and physiology coursework. The Anatomage table is an 84-inch touch screen that offers digitized images of human cadavers and interactive medical learning tools. The table features highly detailed segmentations of 2,950 structures in male and female cadavers. “There is so much to learn,” said Melissa Miller, a professor in health science and human performance. “To our students, anatomy is basically a new language. We’re trying to find ways to reach our students.” Today’s students are more comfortable learning with interactive digitals tools than with textbooks, she added. Anatomy and physiology, called A&P, is a challenging course due to the sheer complexity of human body systems. It is required for several FLCC programs: nursing, kinesiology and human performance, health care studies, physical education and exercise science, and nutrition and dietetics. Melissa said her own experience working with cadavers was transformative and happened while she attended Northeast College of Health Sciences in Seneca Falls. She had taken anatomy courses before and found them unremarkable. The ability to see actual human bones and organs – as opposed to textbook images and physical models – “changed everything I felt about anatomy and physiology,” she said. It is not practical or cost-effective for community colleges to have cadaver labs. The digitized versions give a similar experience to many more students entering the health care field. Research team goes on the road A professor and three students presented their research on cultivating mushroom fibers for their nutritional content at the Lockheed Martin Global Vision Center outside Washington, D.C. in February. Professor James Hewlett oversees the multi-year project, which began in 2021 as a collaboration with a local company and has since grown to include the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University. Jim and three students presented their work in front of a large group of researchers, U.S. Department of Defense representatives, and employees of Lockheed Martin. Student presenters were Paul Kuehnert of Shortsville, a dual biotechnology and horticulture major; Asa McKaig of Canandaigua, a horticulture major; and Matthew Brooks ’21. The project involves developing a fermentation system for producing mushroom mycelium, the fibers that extend below the caps, and the nutritional compounds they generate. Last year, FLCC received a $100,000 Department of Defense grant to continue the work as part of BioMADE BUILD, a national academic challenge for college teams and industry mentors. FLCC was among eight institutions awarded funding and the only project with a community college as the lead agency. The goal with NCERC is to find a cheap and widely available food source for the mushroom mycelium to convert into nutrients for humans. Ethanol production yields a waste product that could be one source. The next steps involve experimenting with other waste streams and scaling up to commercial production with NCERC.
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