Diné College instructor Barbara Klein is spearheading the college’s Tiny Earth initiative.

Diné College is joining the push to mitigate one of the most critical public health crises facing the world: antibiotic resistance. Diné College professors Barbara Klein and Shazia Tabassum Hakim recently took part in a week-long seminar at the University of Wisconsin related to the Tiny Earth initiative, which is a network of instructors and students focused on crowdsourcing antibiotic discovery from soil.

The program was founded in 2018 by University of Wisconsin professor Jo Handelsman with a two-fold mission: 1) to encourage students to pursue careers in science through real-world, applicable laboratory and field research in introductory courses, and 2) to address a worldwide health threat—the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics—by tapping into the collective power of student researchers and living up to Tiny Earth’s motto, “Student sourcing antibiotic discovery.”

Klein and Hakim are microbiology instructors at Diné College. Klein works at the Tsaile campus and Hakim at the Tuba City campus. “The program introduced us to a research project that will engage the students in authentic research,” Klein explains. “The students will be scientists contributing to the answer to one of the most challenging problems facing humans. The research project could be substituted for lab activities in microbiology classes. Antibiotics resistance is a very serious problem facing the world.”

Tiny Earth leverages a network of partner institutions whereby instructors learn the curriculum and integrate the research protocols in lab-based courses at universities, colleges and high schools. Tiny Earth’s student scientists, many of them experiencing the scientific method in action for the first time, hunt for novel antibiotic organisms in soil samples. It’s a global and growing network in 2019, Klein and Hakim explain. The program is adding 22 new partner institutions this year. The community of instructors now encompasses 15 countries and 45 U.S. states.

“Twenty-seven of us were trained in the lab techniques and we also spent time conversing with our peers on how to best incorporate the methods and how to address possible obstacles and limitations,” Hakim says. “The project could be expanded and serve as a summer research project.”

Instructors from educational institutions across the United States attended the intensive five-day training at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Discovery Building. The new instructors are part of Tiny Earth’s commitment to engage schools, departments, colleges, and aspiring scientists across the globe.

The program is more than just a course. It is a network of talented students and instructors who share research findings, best practices, and enthusiasm for discovery. “This training provided an opportunity to integrate an inquiry-based approach into our microbiology and general biology classes, addressing a very relevant topic,” Klein says.