It Pays to Support the KEYS Summer High School Internship Program
Sometimes telling students about a career at job fairs and touring them through laboratories just doesn’t give them enough to get excited about. Instead, we want to give thirty-six exceptional Arizona high school students from diverse backgrounds a unique, hands-on research experience through the sixth annual KEYS (Keep Engaging Youth in Science) Internship Program at the University of Arizona (UA). The students, who were chosen after a rigorous application process, will work in research laboratories with faculty scientists over a seven-week period this summer, and will personally participate in bioscience, bioengineering, and environmental health science research.
That’s where you come in.
KEYS relies on funding by individual, academic, and corporate sponsors who believe in the importance of educating future scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in Arizona. Without this support, many highly qualified students would not have access to this type of opportunity. Because students are able to learn about research and other science careers through actual hands-on training, many KEYS alumni have said that the program changed their lives.
Sponsoring KEYS will provide you with great PR opportunities (for example, support at the $2,000-level would give you the opportunity to name an internship) and perhaps a life-long connection that may result in a top employee a few years down the road.
Read about an outstanding former KEYS student here.
The KEYS program is directed by the BIO5 Institute and the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center at the UA College of Pharmacy. The 2012 summer program runs May 29 through July 13.
By the conclusion of this session, more than 135 Arizona teens will have completed KEYS internships and contributed to ongoing research projects. Upon finishing high school, the large majority of these students will have chosen to attend college, pursuing science, engineering or mathematics degrees.
To find out more about supporting the KEYS program and helping educate a stream of well-trained, future scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians in our community, visit http://keys.pharmacy.arizona.edu/ or send an email hilgert@email.arizona.edu.