High School Science Research Program

Natural History, Sept, 2004

When asked what they did on their summer vacations, the high school interns working at the American Museum of Natural History will have some amazing jobs to describe. For example, instead of serving up fries or ringing up retail sales like some of her classmates, Wendy Guillen, 15, mingled with monkeys this August at the Sedgewick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, working with Museum scientists on behavioral and genetic studies involving groups of chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas in an effort to analyze their family relationships.

Wendy is just one of the 60 interns participating in the Museum's High School Science Research Program (HSSRP), an early training ground for high school sophomores and juniors, many of them city kids reflecting the great ethnic and racial diversity of New York City, interested in pursuing careers in research science. The HSSRP students work side-by-side with Museum professionals and top scientists on a wide range of exciting projects.

It is a selective, intensive program in which students commit to at least two years, including summers. Students declare a "major" related to an area of Museum specialization, such as genetics, astrophysics, anthropology, or biodiversity, and then follow up with a year of preparation that includes courses in content and research techniques. Most of the students participate in ongoing scientific research, like Lawrence Lin, 17, a junior at Bronx High School of Science who has been analyzing the DNA of gray whales for the last year in the Museum's molecular laboratories. Others are collecting frozen tissue samples for the Museum's Ambrose Monell Collection for Molecular and Microbial Research, updating the online database showing the evolutionary relationships between different bird species, and investigating Mesoamerican artifacts from the Museum's vaults that have never been studied.

The High School Science Research Program is supported in part by the Lita Annenberg Hazen Foundation.