Achievement

IGERT funding supports our four-week summer apprentices program for high school students interested in getting early exposure to the research lab environment. SHARP matches rising high-school seniors with graduate students in the nanosciences. Graduate mentors gain supervisory experience and an extra set of hands for making progress on their summer projects. The program has broad impacts: high-schoolers learn what the daily lab bench is really like, graduate trainees are placed in the supervisor's role (albeit at a modest scale) as mentors, and the investigators' labs establish valuable connections with local high school science departments that encourage increased participation/interest in STEM subjects at the K-12 level.