Life-Changing Science: The BioBuilder Podcast · BioBuilder Educational Foundation

Where Life Sciences Meet Tech Training in High School Curriculum

·28 min

Season four of Life-Changing Science opens with Aziz Shahan talking to Billy Carrier, a teacher at Volunteer High School in Tennessee. Billy says he studied pre-med psychology and neuroscience at William & Mary before earning an MSc in education. The episode centers on how he built BiSTEM, a program that blends biology with career and technical training. He first heard about BioBuilder about a year and a half earlier through his work as a competitive robotics coach. BioBuilder also came into view through the Robotron League competition in Tennessee. A connection through the NiceWander Foundation helped link him to Natalie and the program. Aziz then asks Billy to explain how BiSTEM 1 fits into a high-school schedule. Billy says BiSTEM 1 was mostly freshmen, with a few sophomores, and that it replaced Biology 1 for those students. The class still counted for Biology 1 credit. At the end of the semester, the students took Tennessee's state biology end-of-course exam. That makes the program feel less like an add-on and more like part of the regular curriculum. Billy also describes BiSTEM 2, which had 12 students. That group ranged from freshmen to seniors, although most of the class was still younger students. Two seniors joined because they were interested in the program. One of those seniors had not gone on to another biology class after taking Biology 1 years earlier. The other had already taken AP Biology and still wanted the BiSTEM experience. Billy says the students really enjoyed BiSTEM 2. He and Aziz then move into curriculum design, feedback, and the work of improving each round of the program. Billy also describes a lab where students modified yeast to make bread enriched with a vitamin lacking in some populations, which he frames as a practical synthetic biology project. The episode keeps an interview-driven pace, letting the guest narrate the work, the experiments, and the confidence-building side of teaching biology.

As heard by us

A high school biology program where robotics, BioBuilder, and curriculum design meet.

Billy Carrier lays out how Volunteer High School turned freshman biology into BiSTEM 1, a program that ties the state bio course to career and technical training.

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Why you'd press play

A freshman biology class that also folds in career and technical training.

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