Rural Mountain School Goes Biotech

Avery County is known for its beautiful Appalachian slopes, including Grandfather Mountain, and for its production of Fraser fir Christmas trees.

But a grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center is connecting the region’s ancient forest-based heritage to the economic opportunities of biotechnology.

The $26,000 Educational Enhancement Grant to Avery High School is equipping a new biotech lab to open with the start of the 2011-2012 academic year.

Agriculture education teacher Gretchen Blackburn says the new biotech lab will help her educate and inspire students in a way that will be vital to sustaining a portion of the county's economic future.

For the first time, students in the rural district will be able to learn basic lab techniques and use the tools of micropropagation to grow new trees and even preserve fragile specimens that can be planted and sold by area growers and businesses.

The lab will enable students to learn valuable skills while helping the existing agricultural community in its quest to reproduce and preserve rare and endangered species, ornamental shrubbery, and Fraser Fir trees indigenous to their area in far northwestern North Carolina.

 “Our goal is to provide students with the best and most diverse education possible so that they may compete for jobs and entrance into post-secondary education,” said John Grice, director of the school’s Career Technology Education and Science Curriculum.

The Avery County grant is one of a dozen such awards from the Biotechnology Center this year to schools and colleges statewide, providing more than $486,000 to further biotechnology education and workforce training as part of the state’s 30-year commitment to creating sustainable and dignified jobs in the life sciences.

Educators may submit preproposals for the next round of Educational Enhancement Grants until noon May 4, 2011.