• The experiences the students have during the summer program influence them in many aspects of their lives.
  • Students come to understand the concept of medical ignorance as they get hands-on training and learn how to ask profound questions.
  • In the laboratories, students learn how to work together to efficiently conduct their research and ask important questions.
  • Students have the opportunity to conduct research using advanced tools and technology.
  • During the summer program, students enjoy working in laboratories on campus under the direction of physicians and scientists.

Enter the wonderful and daunting world of medical and other ignorance...

The focus of this federally funded program uses the in sites and techniques of medical ignorance to improve science education and health literacy by focusing on
Questions, Questioning and Questioners.

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Donna Sider: "I'm questioning more."

When Donna Sider finished her tenure at the 2000 Summer Institute for Medical Ignorance (SIMI), she expected to instill a change in her students. What she hadn't anticipated, however, was that she, too, would change. "I'm questioning more," Sider says, pausing to direct a group of excitable sixth-graders at Baboquivari Intermediate School in Sells, Ariz. "I've been using the question mark throughout, since I got back from the program." Sider's students can attest to that. In the back of her classroom, a four-foot green question mark is a touchstone for different lessons. She says it's just one thing that arose from her SIMI experience, where she worked on infectious disease research. Sider, who teaches reading and science, says she pushes students to question what they're reading and what they've been taught.

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What is Ignorance?
xpert opinions on definitions of Ignorance...

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