A four-day camp at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aims to expose rural high school students to life in the lab, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
As populations dwindle, rural high schools in the state have been struggling to keep their science departments staffed and this camp, hosted by the Morgridge Institute for Research, aims to supplement what students learn in school.
The Journal writes that the 21 students and their teachers put on lab coats alongside Madison researchers and students to work on cryopreservation and live human stem cells. The students also heard from the director of the regenerative medicine center there about stem cell research as well as from a bioethics expert. They also had causal interactions with college students and grad students that gave them insight both into life in the lab and life as a college student.
"[The students] are wearing lab coats. The scientists are wearing lab coats," coordinator Dan Murphy tells the Journal. "They start to think of themselves as a scientist."