FORGES: Foundations of Outreach for Recruitment of Great Engineers & Scientists
STEM exposure & experience summer program for high schoolers
CHARM partnered with academic departments and local industry at the University of Delaware to provide experiential exposure to STEM fields, collegiate lab settings, and industry settings and equipment to students historically underrepresented in STEM. Students visited one department or industry partner for one day per week, for 7 weeks.
- Participants engaged in a variety of hands-on activities, including:
- Tested tensile strength of different materials in Materials Science & Engineering
- Used industrial equipment & observation to identify a mystery polymer at Chemours
- Used electrolysis to brass plate a penny in Chemistry & Biochemistry
- Edited genes using CRISPR in the Christiana Care Gene Editing Institute
- Conducted a mock ELISA to detect illness in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
- Separated and observed gametes of sea urchins in Biological Sciences
- Used computers and laser cutters to make keychains in the UD Makerspace
- UD faculty, students, and industry partners participated in developing and delivering programming, with participation from CHARM graduate students and postdocs. Three local teachers participated in the program which provided them with STEM education resources that will benefit their own lesson preparations.
- Ten students historically underrepresented in STEM participated in the Summer 2024 program and were featured in the UDaily article ‘Forging STEM’s Next Generation’
