Educational Outreach Program

The goal of this new program is to form connections between the Broad Institute and high school students and teachers in the Boston/Cambridge area that will generate excitement and interest in cutting edge biomedical research. Through this program, students and teachers can experience the Broad community and explore what it means to be a scientist. The program provides students with opportunities to do experiments and analyze results so that they may experience the processes of scientific inquiry and discovery firsthand.

In order to achieve these goals, the Broad offers a range of enriching experiences to local schools and students – from class field trips to summer internships to teacher forums – while fostering a group of sustained relationships with high school administrators and science teachers. Through these experiences, we hope to expand understanding of scientific work and careers and encourage students to develop their academic and career interests in science.

There are currently four main areas of this program:

• Class Visits to the Broad Institute
  During the school year, groups of students and their teachers can arrange to visit the Broad Institute. Visits can include: experiments, computer and paper-based activities that relate to current Broad research, tours of the building and facilities, interaction with Broad scientists, discussions of science careers, and visits to the new Broad Institute museum.
  
  
• Lab-based Summer Internships
  Each summer, the Broad offers paid summer internships to a select group of students, who each work one-on-one with a scientific mentor on a project designed for the student and directly overseen by the mentor. Teachers and administrators from participating Boston/Cambridge area schools can nominate rising seniors, and selection will be based on an online application, transcript, letter of recommendation, and interview. The application process will begin in January each year, and the internships will occur in July and August.
  
  
• Teacher Forums
  At announced times during the year, the Broad will host Teacher Forums, where teachers will learn about current research at the Broad, tour the facility, and learn more about opportunities for the students and teachers at their schools. These forums provide the teachers with the opportunity to arrange for subsequent visits for their schools’ teachers and students, and help to design the content of these visits in order to work best with the schools’ needs and curriculum.
  
  
• Semester-long Research Projects
  Each semester, a group of approximately fifteen high school students will be invited to the Broad Institute for eight Saturday sessions to work together on a semester-long research project. The students will isolate, characterize, and identify microbes using a combination of microbiology, molecular biology, and genomics techniques.
  
  

For more information on this program, contact the Program Director:

Megan Rokop, Ph.D.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
7 Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-324-6249
Email: rokop@broad.mit.edu