Garcia Center Leads Students from the Materials Laboratory to the Real World
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Garcia Center Leads Students from the Materials Laboratory to the Real World Ulrich Strom “The usual academic environment provides training that is heavily biased toward individual achievement, and rewards individual accomplishment,” said Miriam Rafailovich, director of the Garcia Center for Polymers at Engineered Interfaces at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; “Our goal is to demonstrate that an educational platform can be built which prepares the students for the real world environment where collaborative research is the norm.” At the Garcia Center, supported in part by the Division of Materials Research (DMR) at the National Science Foun dation (NSF), research groups consist of individuals of wide educational levels and experience. Particularly unique about this Center is the incorporation of a very large number of high school students in its research program. Each summer, a group of about 60 high school research scholars, approximately 20 undergraduate students, and five high school teachers, who come from across the United States—and recently as far as Germany, France, Israel, Korea, and Taiwan—join the regular staff of graduate students, postdoctoral associates, and university faculty in a journey into the world of materials research. Even though the activities begin as part of an organized summer program, they eventually develop into a quest for lifetime discovery, learning, and networking. The program, known as the Garcia Research Scholar Program, combines formal and informal instruction which gives the students a sound foundation in the fundamentals of research that also stresses the importance of innovation. To help the high school students feel comfortable in the college environment and unafraid to think and explore, the program combines formal lectures and open-ended research with many opportunities for the students to socialize and develop other talents. For the first two weeks of the Research Scholar Program, high school students participate in a research “boot camp.” During “boot camp,” they receive intensive training by the laboratory staff on laboratory techniques, safety protocols and waste disposal, basic statistics, data-base mining, intellectual property, and ethical conduct. Throughout this period the students are divided into small groups, with experienced mentors from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs also funded at Garcia by DMR. The mentors help facilitate the transition 728
Students experience “real life” collaborative research in the laboratory at the 2006 Research Scholars Program of the Garcia Center for Polymers at Engineered Interfaces.
from the structured high school environment into the open-ended research mode. After “boot camp,” the high school students perform a week-long experiment while being closely supervised and taught how to work in a group, giving proper credit and incorporating techniques they have just learned. Senior guest speakers are invited to introduce the students to various resea
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