Are you looking for more experience in biology? Did you want to experience labs that are taught outside of the school curriculum? Paly Biology club is a student run club that is dedicated to spreading biology related topics to all interested students.
Palo Alto High School senior Allie Jackson said she took the initiative to run for co-president of Biology Club because many of the members were graduating during her sophomore year. “My main goal [for this club] is to help get people interested in biology and maybe introduce them to new topics that they might find interesting,” Jackson said.
Because the field of biology is so broad, Jackson tries to use club meetings as a time to introduce more sectional concepts that lie within biology.
Club meetings often revolve around lectures or labs to explore these concepts.
“A lot of the time we just do a lecture or a presentation, either me or my co-president [Rasia Yu] [will] prepare some slides about something and occasionally, we do lab experiments,” Jackson said.
In addition to the lab experiments and lectures, one of the best aspects of the Biology club is that members could vote on the topics that they want to do throughout the school year.
“At the start of the year, me and my co-president were thinking about doing a survey and see what people wants to do,” Jackson said. “Based on members’ preference, the club can focus on lectures, guest speakers, labs or study for the USABO [United State of America Biology Olympiad, a test based, national biology competition, and IBO, International Biology Olympiad’s qualifier].”
Last year, Jackson worked on collaborating with the other clubs to give lectures with similar fields of interest. For example, the Biology Cclub has given out a lecture about epidemiology with the Paly HOSA (Health Occupation Student of America) club since the topic has correlation between both clubs. The club collaborated with the Veterinary Medicine Club about zoonotic diseases.
Aside from absorbing information from the club presentations, club members are also encouraged to give presentations on the subjects they are interested in.
“We invited all of our club members to present if they wanted to,” Jackson said. “Members could present whatever they are interested in, anything they find cool.”
The presentation could be done in a wide array of topics, and it should be whatever the presenter feels most confident or capable of. Jackson once did a presentation on trees she found interesting, she said.
In addition to presentations, Jackson also looked forward to bringing more guest speakers this year. Jackson invited a beekeeper as one of their guest speakers in her junior year.
“She [the beekeeper] brought in living bees,” Jackson said. “We got to see the bees, we got to taste some honey, and she talked about bees and their life.”
While most of the students in Paly take biology as a class, there’s a difference between what the students can learn from classes compared to what they can learn in the club.
“In biology class, there’s a set curriculum,” Jackson said. “[The teacher dictates] what we are doing everyday, like evolution, and other [like chemistry of life and body systems]. But in the Biology club, we try to pick the topics that are more niche and interesting.”
The club held meetings weekly on Thursday during lunch in 1704. Because of the frequent and continuous meeting time, students can develop mutual and close relationships between the members, Jackson said.
Jackson said that she enjoys learning new aspects of biology and sharing it with other people, and she wishes that her effort could positively impact her members.
“I hope that they’ll learn something new and gain a greater appreciation for biology,” Jackson said. “To be inspired to pursue biology or investigate certain topics that we talked about further.”
