Top science honor may come to St. Ed

It must be in the genes.

Peggy Deichstetter, a biology teacher at St. Edward High School in Elgin, has been named a finalist for the 2008 Genzyme-Invitrogen Biotech Educator award.

Chosen from more than 1,000 educators across the country, Deichstetter is the sole finalist from Illinois.

The award was established by the Virginia-based Biotechnology Institute to recognize leading high school educators who are bringing biotechnology to their classrooms and encouraging fellow science teachers to do the same.

Teachers have many different ways of teaching biology, Deichstetter said -- among them conservation, body systems, and botany and biotechnology.

"In today's society, learning biotechnology is so vital," she said.

St. Ed students in Deichstetter's honors biology, sophomore biology and Advanced Placement biology classes do their own DNA fingerprinting, learn to gene-splice and study the effects of different proteins.

The privately funded school, Deichstetter said, allots little money for classroom research projects. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has allowed Deichstetter to borrow their equipment and supplies at little cost, she said.

The Biotech Educator award winner will be announced June 16 at the Biotechnology Institute's annual conference on biotechnology education in San Diego. Finalists will have the opportunity to meet U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

"Obviously I'm thrilled," Deichstetter said. Still, she hasn't told her students yet. "I don't want to draw any extra attention to myself," she said.