Ralph,
The ACS program, "Project Seed" specifically allows, and pays a small salary
to students who help out, and learn some chemistry, in real labs under the
supervision of an experienced mentor. The basic idea is two-fold, help
deserving students earn a little money and perhaps recruit new minds into
becoming candidates for the next Nobel in chemistry.
Jay
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Stuart"
To:
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 10:30 AM
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Best Practices for Students in Industrial Labs
>A DCHAS-L member who preferred to ask this question anonymously asked me
>to post this...
>
> - Ralph
>
> Our industrial laboratory has previously allowed high school students
> (under age 18) to shadow researchers in the laboratory. The parents must
> sign a release form to allow emergency medical treatment and disclose any
> prescription medications the student is currently taking. There is a
> lengthy and serious safety presentation with the students and their
> mentors prior to entering the lab. The students are allowed to observe
> low risk experiments, e.g., room temperature reactions, pipeting non-BBP
> materials into multi-well plates, use of microscopes and surface analysis
> equipment and HPLC's, etc. The students are not allowed into high hazard
> areas such as hazardous drug labs or to observe experiments that involve
> pyrophoric reagents (hydrides, etc.). The mentor must accompany the
> student in the laboratory 100% of the time.
>
> We have had a recent request from management to allow a high school
> student (< 18 years old) to actually conduct experiments in our research
> laboratory during the summer. Do any industrial labs allow high school
> students to participate in a summer research project? What are the
> limitations? Do you have any guidelines to share?
>
> We have considered having a local university allow the student to work in
> their lab and our company sponsor the project.
>
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