The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Burns & Allen Research Institute Student Program is designed to strengthen the quality of pre-college health science education. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has demonstrated a strong interest and proven success record in pre-college programs. In this application, eight high school students and one inservice teacher will participate in a 7 week summer program. Two of the students will continue in their placement for the academic year. In order to demonstrate the depth of support and commitment from the Research Institute, Dr. James Klinenberg, Sir Vice-President for Academic Affairs, will serve as the program director. A program coordinator will manage the daily operations and the Research Institute education subcommittee will help supervise the design and implementation of the program. Mentors from productive laboratories who have expressed an interest in training the students/teachers will be chosen by the program director and the education sub-committee. The students/teachers will participate in a specific research project providing hands on experience as well as exposure to research planning, library research, data analysis, and the publication process. The students/teachers will also participate in structured enrichment activities including weekly educational programs in the summer which will include. Demonstration of laboratory techniques, pane discussion on research careers, presentation on ethical issues in animal and human research, training in compute literature searches and Netscape, discussion of college experience with Masters program students on campus panel presentation on the diversity of research at Cedars-Sinai. Students/teachers will present their research project at t he end of the program. A multifaceted evaluation program has been designed which will provide ongoing feedback from the students/teachers who will be tracked to measure the impact of the program.
