Summer Scholars program gives local high school students hands on STEM experience

Seth Kindall, a rising senior at Nottoway High School, was one of 10 high-school students who spent eight weeks on Longwood's campus this summer learning about STEM fields and getting hands-on laboratory research experience that usually isn't available until college.

Kindall said one of the things he enjoyed most about Longwood's Summer Scholars program was the opportunity to talk with professors about what he might want to major in when he gets to college, as well as getting career advice.

"It's been really nice to have those conversations with knowledgeable people as I go forward," said Kindall, who thinks he wants to pursue a career in engineering or physics. "They were able to give me some good advice on the majors I should look into and the type of jobs that I might want to do, and what those jobs actually entail."

The Summer Scholars program is an exploratory summer research program for high-school students who already have an interest in STEM, but might not know what field they want to pursue. One other benefit of the program is that the participants get paid.

"It's an enrichment program, so they're getting exposure and hands-on experience in a lot of different STEM fields," said Dr. Sarah Porter, professor of analytical chemistry, who has spearheaded the program since its inception. "It gives them a chance to explore their interests further and learn about college life while they're here."

The program, which is overseen by Porter and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dr. Jonathan White, launched in 2019. At that time, Porter had secured funding for up to four students. The program resumed in 2021 and continued to have up to four students through 2023, with funding from the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP), an umbrella organization that funds multiple grant programs.

However, this year Porter was able to expand the Summer Scholars program and offer it for up to 15 high school students, with funding she secured from a different AEOP source that offered more flexibility.

"It gave me a lot more room to make some changes to the program for the better and to offer it to a lot more students," she said. "It's a little bit shorter than it used to be. And the students get a wider diversity of exposure to STEM fields than they did before."

Students in the program this summer were from Prince Edward, Cumberland, Nottoway and Charlotte counties. Porter said she hopes to get 15 students next year. Porter markets the program to schools in the Southside area surrounding Farmville because the criteria for AEOP funding is to reach underserved, underrepresented students, which includes rural areas.

Tammie Brazeal, a rising senior at Prince Edward County High School, said she really enjoyed her experience in the program. One experiment she participated in was with Longwood students in PRISM, the university's summer research program. It involved extracting oils from rose petals and cedar chips to get a pure scent. They did a similar experiment with aspirin tablets.

"We ground up those with a mortar and pestle, and we mixed the powder in with methanol and extracted everything but the aspirin so that we got just pure aspirin extracted, which was really cool," said Brazeal, who wants to pursue a major in pre-med or nursing and is already in a nursing program at her high school. "I have always been really interested in anatomy and how the body works."

Before this year, the high-school Summer Scholars worked directly with one group of faculty-student research teams in the PRISM program. This year Porter changed the program so that the students rotated through the PRISM groups and also had a chance to attend workshops with experts. The workshops focused on environmental science, electronics, molecular biology, chemistry and geography/GIS, giving them a breadth of exposure to STEM fields.

Each student was tasked with developing a research idea or topic that they wanted to learn more about and then producing a poster explaining their issue and why they wanted to examine it. At the end of the program they presented their posters.

Kindall's poster topic looked at how genetic engineering can be used to enhance bacteria or other organisms that can digest plastic. Brazeal's poster focused on exome sequencing, which is used to diagnose congenital hemolytic anemia, a type of hereditary blood disease that mainly affects women.

Kindall said one of his main takeaways from the program was how interconnected the STEM disciplines are. He learned he doesn't have to major in chemistry or biology to work in a science-related field.

"That was something Dr. Beach stressed a lot. He said no matter what field you're going into, you can really work with the sciences in any way you want," Kindall said, referring to Dr. Dale Beach, associate professor of biology. "For example, if I pursue engineering I could still have a career related to science if I'm making machines that scientists use."

Both Kindall and Brazeal said their favorite workshop during the program was with a Tasmanian professor, Dr. Nigel Baptist. "He was really cool and he let us solder our own circuit boards and then wired those so we could produce light," Brazeal said. "That was really fun."

Brazeal said she liked that the program offered a window into what college life would be like, especially how it relates to studying science. She mentioned it was helpful to learn about using safety equipment for chemistry and how to break down a research paper.

"Scientific research papers are a lot different from typical research papers," she said. "Then learning how to adapt to a new place, that's really helpful because I'm going to have to learn to do that wherever I go."

Porter said she gets a benefit from running the program as well.

"I enjoy doing anything that can get younger people excited about science," she said. "This is my contribution to getting the next generation of STEM talent interested and excited about science so that, by the time they get to college, they've all made up their minds."