Ralph,

The ACS program, "Project Seed" specifically allows, and pays a small salary 
to students who help out, and learn some chemistry, in real labs under the 
supervision of an experienced mentor.  The basic idea is two-fold, help 
deserving students earn a little money and perhaps recruit new minds into 
becoming candidates for the next Nobel in chemistry.

Jay

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ralph Stuart" 
To: 
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 10:30 AM
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Best Practices for Students in Industrial Labs

>A DCHAS-L member who preferred to ask this question anonymously asked  me 
>to post this...
>
> - Ralph
>
> Our industrial laboratory has previously allowed high school students 
> (under age 18) to shadow researchers in the laboratory.  The parents  must 
> sign a release form to allow emergency medical treatment and  disclose any 
> prescription medications the student is currently  taking.  There is a 
> lengthy and serious safety presentation with the  students and their 
> mentors prior to entering the lab.  The students  are allowed to observe 
> low risk experiments, e.g., room temperature  reactions, pipeting non-BBP 
> materials into multi-well plates, use of  microscopes and surface analysis 
> equipment and HPLC's, etc.  The  students are not allowed into high hazard 
> areas such as hazardous drug  labs or to observe experiments that involve 
> pyrophoric reagents  (hydrides, etc.).  The mentor must accompany the 
> student in the  laboratory 100% of the time.
>
> We have had a recent request from management to allow a high school 
> student (< 18 years old) to actually conduct experiments in our  research 
> laboratory during the summer.  Do any industrial labs allow  high school 
> students to participate in a summer research project?   What are the 
> limitations?  Do you have any guidelines to share?
>
> We have considered having a local university allow the student to work  in 
> their lab and our company sponsor the project.
> 

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