The Research Experience for Teachers (RET) is an intensive professional development program where we place middle and high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teachers in Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) laboratories for seven weeks. During this program, you will get hands-on experience doing cutting-edge research and use the tools, language, and practices of science while designing hands-on learning activities for your classroom. As a fellow, you will work under the direction of a principal investigator (PI) along with postdoctoral and graduate student mentors from the PI’s lab.

The program includes a $7,500 stipend and a $750 supplies budget to develop the classroom activity and implement it with your students.

Housing and transportation expenses are not covered by the program.

As an RET fellow, you will work at the UW-Madison campus in a MRSEC laboratory daily for seven weeks. Not only will you learn about the lab, their research goals, and their methods. You and your research partners will collaboratively design and develop an engaging activity for your classroom that is inspired by the research in the lab. You will take part in research meetings, seminars from renowned researchers, and outreach events that will enable you to test your activities before bringing them into the classroom. After the program, you will implement the activities you designed in your own class. Our MRSEC staff will continue to work with you in your classrooms to document and evaluate your project’s effectiveness. Novel, well developed and tested activities that do well in the classroom will be made available to other teachers through MRSEC websites and initiatives.