Sharing “Our Protein-Rich World” Through the Duke+NEON Partnership

In Fall 2026, Gustavo Silva, Jack H. Neely Associate Professor of Biology, is teaching the second course offered by Duke through a partnership with the National Education Opportunity Network (NEON). The Cook Center is the institutional home of the Duke+NEON partnership, which began last year with a medical sociology course taught by Cook Center director and professor of Sociology Tyson Brown.

Silva is teaching his class, Biology 132: Our Protein-Rich World, to 250 students in Title 1 high schools across the country. It takes a robust, dedicated team to deliver a NEON course. Colleagues in the Center for Teaching and Learning and Duke’s Academic Media Production unit helped with course design and recording Silva’s lessons. Ten Duke Teaching Fellows — eight undergraduates and two graduate students — are working with Silva, co-teachers at participating high schools and NEON staff to deliver a rigorous, engaging class that demonstrates how universities can use creative course design and implementation to extend educational opportunities far beyond campus.

We caught up with Silva as he was recording the final lessons for his NEON class to find out what this unique teaching experience has been like for him and why he volunteered to participate.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you first learn about NEON?

I first heard about NEON from Dean Gary Bennett. He learned about it at an event and wondered why Duke wasn’t involved, as he thought it’s one of the most transformational outreach efforts a college can participate in. I was part of a group of faculty he talked with to find out whether we would be interested in teaching a class through NEON. Following that initial conversation, Tyson Brown told me more about the project, as he was setting up the Duke+NEON partnership through the Cook Center and developing his own course.

Tyson is a great ambassador for NEON. He said being involved with it is one of the most meaningful experiences of his career. That made it an easy sell for me, because it connects to my core values in education, equity and accessibility.

Please share a bit about the course you’re teaching and why it's a good fit for the partnership.

I run a research lab that centers on protein. I was already developing a new course for first-year students here at Duke, Biology 132: Our Protein-Rich World, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to adapt the course for NEON at the same time.

We see the word “protein” everywhere these days, but even though we talk a lot about proteins — and eat them all the time — our understanding of what proteins are and what they do is very simple compared to how complex proteins can be. I thought this course could be a great way to combine my passion for protein biology with understanding the global implications of marketing proteins, as well as how we build scientific literacy early on to face a world inundated with misinformation.

Now the course is launching across two platforms at once: in person in the classroom at Duke and all over the U.S. through NEON, with the high school students taking the exact same course as the first-year Duke students.

What has the process of building the course for NEON been like?

Image

It has been an enterprise! For many of my Duke classes, I don't have the chance to workshop all my ideas, but for this course there’s a whole team I’m frequently engaging with. My colleagues from the Center for Teaching & Learning, Duke’s Academic Media Production, NEON, and Divya Srijay, a senior undergraduate student at Duke who is also serving as a NEON Teaching Fellow, have been incredible thought partners in this endeavor. 

My course is a lot richer because of this amazing group of people who are dedicated to inclusive pedagogy and committed to making this course successful for our students.

Do you think this experience will change how you design and teach your classes at Duke?

For sure! I’ve discovered ways I can engage with resources here at Duke that I hadn’t considered before. But there are also insights beyond just how to incorporate technology to make a class equally successful whether it’s hybrid or in-person. I hope that teaching high school students will give me a better sense of what they’re excited about, what moves them, how they use scientific reasoning in their daily lives, how they are sitting in this new space of AI and social media, how they’re combining technology, information and everything that is coming at them at once. Working with high school students will definitely change the way I engage with Duke students in the future.

What has been your experience working with the Cook Center Teaching Fellows?

I interviewed each one of the Teaching Fellows individually. It was hard to pick the final students because they were all amazing. That made me hopeful — seeing how many of our Duke students want to give back through education and share what they have learned and are passionate about.

Image

What do you hope your NEON students will take away from your course beyond the academic content?

My hope is that they can see that they’re taking the same course that our students are taking at Duke: that they have the same capacity, the same skills and they can be successful anywhere they want.

I also want this experience to encourage them to pursue higher education and careers in STEM, if that’s what they’d like to do. I hope we can share our resources to introduce them to new ideas, new ways of thinking, and show how this knowledge can transform their lives and their communities, one protein at a time.