CISTAR Has A Summer Program Like No Other

Creating a Diverse Next Generation of Technically- and Community-Minded Chemical Engineering/STEM Professionals

During summer 2020, with everyone working from home and isolated due to COVID 19, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a video challenge to any NSF grant recipient to showcase a partnership that increased diversity and inclusion in STEM fields. CISTAR and NSBE SEEK made a video together to highlight what is special about their Research Experience and Mentoring (REM) summer program.

Watch the video below to learn more about our 2019 undergraduate students and STEM teachers interested in chemical engineering talk about CISTAR’s summer program that one student called “one of the best experiences I’ve ever had!”

Broadening Who Does Research

After watching the video, you will understand why these students and teachers from our 2019 NSF-supported REM program are so enthusiastic. What they appreciated about the program was an opportunity to do six weeks of cutting-edge research at CISTAR and then spend four weeks “giving back” by mentoring kids at a NSBE SEEK camp—two summer experiences all in one summer! In this way, we cast a wider net, recruiting to CISTAR students and teachers who are interested in chemical engineering and research, but also interested in helping kids underrepresented in engineering get excited about science and STEM fields.

Forging Relationships and Changing Lives

A critical part of the REM program was how students and teachers networked, mentored, and supported one another— first while working in collaborative research teams alongside CISTAR faculty and graduate mentors, and then joining community leaders, corporate sponsors, and other teachers and students at the NSBE SEEK camp for kids. The close relationships that formed over the summer have had an inspirational and lasting impact on our REM students and teachers. Some of them still keep in touch and, pre-COVID, traveled cross-country to meet up with one another.

CISTAR’s REM program was career- and life-changing for many of the students and teachers—not to mention the kids they influenced and got excited about STEM in camps and classrooms across the U.S. We have heard from students who are now thinking about going to graduate school in chemical engineering after their summer experience. The teachers, too, said they learned so much and that it changed how, and what, they were now teaching.

Future Partnerships

This past summer, with labs and camps shut down, we ‘virtually’ brought back some of our 2019 REM students and teachers as consultants to help us build more points of connection between the two summer experiences. Based on their CISTAR research, they developed educational and fun outreach activities for the NSBE SEEK kids to help them understand why they should care about energy and how it affects people, different communities, and our world.

In closing, CISTAR is thrilled with this program—please help us spread the word! The future will be very bright, indeed, if we continue to attract so many diverse, technically- and community-minded individuals to chemical engineering (or other STEM fields) who can help us innovate around our energy use and, eventually, create a world where people have a smaller energy footprint.

Chemical Engineering students: If you want to be a part of our efforts, please get in touch with Denise M. Driscoll, driscoll@purdue.edu, or Maeve Drummond Oakes, maeve@purdue.edu. We’d love to talk to you about your interests and potentially becoming a part of CISTAR.

CISTAR: Facilitating the revitalization of the U.S. petrochemical and fuels industries: Basic research aimed at sustainable development of America’s light hydrocarbon resources. Learn more about CISTAR at: https://cistar.us/

Learn more about NSBE SEEK at: https://www.nsbe.org/Events.aspxj

Learn more about Research Experiences for Mentors (REM) Program: https://cistar.us/CISTAR/education/remprogram