Nov 08, 2021

IBC-affiliated mentors solicited for summer student internships

Eric Crandall (Assistant Research Professor, Biology) is seeking faculty mentors to increase diversity in STEM and at PSU for the summer PhD Bridge program for 2022.

Eric Crandall (Assistant Research Professor, Biology) is seeking faculty mentors to increase diversity in STEM and at PSU for the summer PhD Bridge program for 2022.

The SEAS Islands Alliance creates pathways into the environmental and biological sciences for underrepresented students from US island territories, including Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. The Alliance creates enrichment programs for students in middle and high school, with the most promising students matriculating to a PhD Bridge program, which will be held for the first time in person in summer of 2022. 

The Bridge program will run from the beginning of June through the end of July. The students will spend much of June doing trainings in the laboratories of Mónica Medina, Iliana Baums and Roberto Iglesias-Prieto, but then will have most of July available for a brief project in Penn State host labs, before doing a presentation of their research at the end of July. They will likely receive Data Carpentry training in June, so will be able to complete basic analyses and data manipulation tasks in R. Moreover, you or your designated mentors will also be able to receive mentor training designed by the NSF-funded Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). 

Bringing in students from places and cultures that are not well represented at R1 institutions can be an enriching experience for a research laboratory. This past summer, Christina Grozinger (Entomology) and Natalie Boyle (Entomology) mentored two students from Puerto Rico through projects - although the experience had to be remote due to the pandemic, it was as successful as possible given the circumstances. They can tell you more about their experience.

Please contact ecrandall@psu.edu if you or folks in your lab would be interested in mentoring one or two students this summer. Write in 2-3 sentences what project(s) the student(s) could work on and whether you might be interested in recruiting the student(s) into a PhD supposing they work well in your laboratory (this is not required!).