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Program Director:
Dr. George Carlson
Institute Director & Senior Scientist Professor
McLaughlin Research Institute
McLaughlin Research Institute
1520 23rd Street South
Great Falls, MT 59405
406/545-6044
gac@po.mri.montana.edu
The links below describe the outcomes and challenges this grantee experienced and what resources they are willing to share.
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The summer high school student research apprentice program at McLaughlin Research Institute (MRI) is among the oldest in the country, and, together with our college internship program, has a proven record of success. As the only site with active biomedical research programs within a three-hour drive, MRI sees a responsibility to serve as an educational resource for its rural region, which contains a large Native American population. With HHMI support we will expand the number of our traditional student and teacher internships. The first goal of this project is to provide more pre-college students the opportunity to participate in research programs at MRI. Applications for the internships are distributed to guidance counselors and science teachers at all high schools in the region. Institute scientists review the applications, which include letters of recommendation, grades, and national test scores. Each student works under a principal investigator on a specific problem in an ongoing research project. At the end of the 10- week program, each student, including college students, prepares and presents a fifteen minute talk on their research. MRI also has provided summer research opportunities for high school teachers. In addition to increasing the number of teachers in the laboratory each summer, this project offers a new direction as its second major goal. The newly designed teacher program will cover two to three years. The foundation of the program is a summer research experience in the first year for each teacher in a faculty member's laboratory. There will be one teacher per laboratory (three teachers per summer) and each of these laboratories will have a high school student intern. The faculty mentor will discuss the project with the teacher and will be available throughout the summer and the school year for advice. We envisage the teacher-scientist partnership as a long term relationship. Following their first summer research experience, three teachers will spend one to two additional summers at MRI working to develop inquiry-based projects for their classrooms. The teachers will identify high school students with an interest in K-12 teaching as a career to join them and their scientist mentors at MRI. The efforts of these scientist-teacher-student teams will be aided by consultants from Montana State University in Bozeman and the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle who have expertise in development and implementation of curriculum supplements. The research experience for teachers not only will hone their classroom skills but may help them identify students showing a greater talent for inquiry based learning than for traditional academic performance. The student programs are aimed not only at fostering the next generation of biomedical researchers and physicians, but also at encouraging talented individuals into K-12 education.
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