Access Excellence

The Access Excellence site is a comprehensive resource that contains a vast array of materials that range from news items, fact sheets, and interviews to lesson plans and discussion forums. Navigation is easy, with buttons labeled What's News, Resource Center, Activities Exchange, Health Headquarters, and Let's Collaborate. It contains so much good information and excellent links to other resources, however, that you could easily spend hours here. You can find information on science careers, biographies about real people and descriptions of their jobs, news about science discoveries, and submissions from actual students.

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For Educators

Access Excellence, launched in 1993, is a national educational program that provides health, biology, and life science teachers access to their colleagues, scientists, and critical sources of scientific information. The program was originally developed and launched by Genentech Inc., and in 1999 joined the National Health Museum, a non-profit organization founded by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop as a national center for health education. Access Excellence currently forms the core of the educational component of the National Health Museum site.

Though Access Excellence no longer provides staff support to teachers, students, and other users and is unable to answer questions or be otherwise responsive, the site remains online in its current form. This form still provides a rich assortment of resources that you can use in your units on health, biology, and life sciences. Some particularly useful sections include the Mystery Spot, where you can find online scientific mysteries that encourage student problem-solving and inquiry, and Activities-To-Go, where you can search for teaching strategies and activities to help students learn the concepts and processes of the life sciences.

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