? ? This proposal is in response to RFA-ES-06-09, Short Term Educational Experiences for Research (STEER) in the Environmental Health Sciences for Undergraduates and High School Students is being submitted by the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The title of the project is"""""""" Connecting Students to Environmental Health Researchers."""""""" Students in this proposal include both undergraduate and high school students. The central goal of this proposed program for short term educational experiences for research is to connect undergraduate and high school students with investigators involved in environmental health research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This research could range from studies at the molecular level up to population- based studies. Secondary goals include: 1) increasing the awareness of these students of the opportunities for research careers in the field of environmental health; 2) increasing the number of students aware of these career opportunities by accepting students from different colleges and universities and high schools; and 3) increasing the number of students that apply to undergraduate or graduate programs relevant to environmental health. In addition to their research experience, students will attend a weekly seminar and journal club in environmental health and tour various core facilities. The culminating activity of this summer research experience will be that the students, in conjunction with their mentors, will develop an abstract and poster of their research for a Research Symposium dedicated for this program. All faculty, students and staff in the Department will be invited to attend and all attendees will be given a copy of an abstract booklet. As part of the investigators' evaluation plan, they will include an exit survey. The investigators are particularly interested in learning what the students' knowledge about environmental health was when they entered the program versus when they ended the program. They will also query about their knowledge of the scientific method, and methods before and after participating. The longer-term goal is to assess whether the students that come through this program enter into undergraduate science programs (in the case of high school students), or science graduate programs (in the case of undergraduates), particularly in an environmental health related discipline. ? ? ? ?
