Newsletter Archives - Micro Nano Technology Education Center

Internships for High School Students

Internships, especially paid ones, are a terrific way to gain experience. Although much of our focus at MNT-EC is on college students, we also strive to update our students and families about internships for high school students. NOTE: See link below for the MNT-EC college–specific internships and more.

Summer Internships and Beyond

Deadlines for national-level internships, open to graduating high school seniors across the USA, are rapidly approaching, with some applications due as early as March (like this week!). While most deadlines are later in the spring, it’s crucial to review each opportunity carefully this week, as eligibility varies from nationwide to state or region-specific programs. Remember, even if an internship is location-specific, guidelines may allow applicants from other states, so examine the requirements closely.

Here are a few great internship opportunities for high school students:

Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) for High School Internships: On this page, you will find lots of information and a 22-page Google document that lists quite a few internships that closed in February 2024, but many of them have rolling applications/deadlines. Note: There’s also a page for our educator buddies: AEOP Programs for Educators.

During the 4-week High School Discovery Program at Microsoft, Discoverers will experience the Design phase of product development, gain foundational skills, mentorship, and community building. Open to rising first-year bachelor’s degree students (graduating high school seniors) living near Redmond, WA, or Atlanta, GA, it’s an opportunity to explore tech careers. Applications open in Redmond on March 5, 2024, and in Atlanta on March 19, 2024.

The Kaiser Permanente Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) offers high school and college students, especially those underserved, underrepresented, and low-income, internship opportunities in the healthcare field through the Community Benefit fund. Interns work in various departments over the summer at KP, learning and contributing to their mission of delivering high-quality, affordable healthcare. The program includes a High School Internship among its three unique offerings. Deadlines vary slightly by location, but roughly mid-March.

NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) offers paid and volunteer internships for high school and college students to engage in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration missions. These internships provide practical work experience alongside mentors across various professions, available full-time or part-time, at NASA centers, facilities, or remotely. Gain on-the-job experience, enhance your resume, and improve career readiness with three sessions offered annually. Explore NASA on this searchable opportunity page, using filters to find suitable categories like high school or rising freshmen.

Internships at the Smithsonian is an exciting and massive page of opportunities for students. This particular page, High School Student/ Recent Graduate, under the Smithsonian Office of Internships, lists a few special opportunities with various deadlines — but check soon as some have March deadlines.

The Library of Congress: Internships and Fellowships. Dozens of opportunities from paid to volunteer. The High School Work Study Program has an ongoing application period.

We will update this page with additional high school-focused internship opportunities as we find them or our partners send them to us. Again, for college-oriented internships and scholarships, the March 4, 2024 edition of This Week in Small has more links and details about the MNT-EC Internship Connector: 03-04-2024 Nano News, Internships, Veteran Jobs.

You can also keep up with the various ways that MNT-EC strives to serve students and families in our email newsletters: Sign up here! You can also visit the Students & Families page.

Shout-out to one of our high school educator allies, New Jersey Teacher of the Year, Christine Girtain, for always sharing cool updates, news (the AEOP for High School Internships page came from her!), and projects for high school students. Christine is also the Director of Authentic Science Research at Toms River Regional Schools.

Random Small _NASA Astronaut Tech, Scholarships, Vacuum Workshop

Kristine Davis, a spacesuit engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, wearing a ground prototype of NASA’s new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), is seen during a demonstration of the suit, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The xEMU suit improves on the suits previous worn on the Moon during the Apollo era and those currently in use for spacewalks outside the International Space Station and will be worn by first woman and next man as they explore the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Thanks for reading our monthly email update, if that’s how you found this post. If you found us by digging into our website and the Think Small news and blog section, we are so glad you found us. “Random Small” is a monthly catch-all post for the latest happenings here at the Micro Nano Technology Education Center and in our wider, bigger community of scientists of all types.

You probably noticed two distinct images — one of an astronaut (just above), and another of a website logo for Skype a Scientist.

First, in the monthly MNT Update, I mentioned how NASA technology often gets transferred outside of NASA into commercial enterprises that license it for new products. This article, Feeling Hot, Staying Cool, is a powerful example of how that works. It highlights the work of a new company, London-based Fifty One Ltd, which is “using a temperature-controlling material developed in part under an SBIR from Johnson Space Center for spacesuit gloves, Fifty One of London is making clothes to alleviate the symptoms of menopause.”

Screenshot of the Fifty One company and project with menopause clothing that is based on the NASA phase change material technology. Image is from the NASA Spinoff website.

Since women make up half the world’s population, there is a lot of need and opportunity (as in billions of people) for materials scientists to work on these phase change materials to find solutions.

In fact, NASA has an entire microsite dedicated to technology transfer called Spinoff and it includes an annual report, of sorts, that highlights the many advances that power our world.

By the way, if you are not yet subscribed to our email community, please visit this signup page. We would love to have you join us, contribute to our efforts, and connect.

Let’s jump to Skype A Scientist because it is so fun and energetic and something you can use in your classrooms or perhaps sign up to help out. From their website: “The mission of Skype a Scientist is simple, yet impactful: to make science accessible and fun through personal connections with scientists. We are an educational entity with a focus on connecting the general public with scientific disciplines in fun and meaningful ways, making science education available and engaging for everyone…”

The Skype A Scientist Instagram page is worth a follow, too. Here’s a sample YouTube videos of a wonderful talk with a brain scientist at the University of Washington. Love Sydney’s enthusiasm. Plus, we’re hoping to interview Dr. Sarah McAnulty, Squid Biologist, and Executive Director of Skype A Scientist.

Sydney Floryanzia is a first-year Ph.D. student in the department of chemical engineering at the University of Washington (UW). Her research involves investigating the blood-brain barrier, drug delivery to the brain, and therapies for degenerative brain diseases.

There are two new scholarship opportunities for STEM-oriented students. These will be added to our Micro Nano Scholarship page later this week, but to give you the absolute latest, cutting edge, head start information we’re putting them here and on our MNT LinkedIn Page (which you seriously might want to follow, but no pressure, of course. Not much pressure…).

The DOD Historically Black Colleges and Universities & Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) Summer Research Internship Program is an annual summer research program offered to current students and recent graduates who studied STEM disciplines at HBCU/MI.
- >>Learn More about this DOD Research/Internship program.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has two programs of interest to our Micro Nanotechnology community of educators and students:
- Scholarships for Community College, 2-Year Technical Programs, and Associate Degree Programs (although it is aimed at mechanical engineering programs, the site specifically states they are open to related, connected degree majors/pursuits, so take a look).
- High School Scholarships: Attention GRADUATING HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS!

The last item, but certainly a great opportunity and worth sharing with your networks (not so subtle hint..): Check out the High Vacuum System Operation Basics Workshop at Normandale Community College coming up next week on two separate days, Monday Dec 12 and again on Wednesday, Dec 14.

Random Small

November 1, 2022 Update:

#1: The National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2023 conference will be held April 13-15, 2023 on the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus in Eau Claire, WI. The conference abstract submission window runs from October 3 to November 30, 2022.

NCUR is seeking volunteers to review abstracts submitted to the NCUR 2023 conference. They expect this review work to occur during the December 2022 timeframe, following the November 30 abstract submission deadline.

Anyone interested to serve as a reviewer should visit the Abstract Reviewers Wanted page, from there you can go to the Reviewer Signup page. Reviewers will be required to create a new account within the conference submission system if they do not already have one.

#2: Learn about the new NSF workforce development program TODAY, Nov 1 at 12PM Pacific time.

The U.S. National Science Foundation launched a new $30 million workforce development program, Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies, or ExLENT earlier this month.

Learn more about the program by joining the Introduction to ExLENT webinar
on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 3:00 p.m. E.T.

Register for the Webinar

Click the link above left to register for this webinar.

ExLENT offers workforce development opportunities to help individuals gain valuable work experience in emerging technology areas such as advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum information science, and semiconductors and microelectronics. With awards of up to $1 million over three years, the program will promote partnerships between organizations in emerging technology fields and those with expertise in workforce development.

ExLENT proposals are due March 2, 2023. For more information, visit Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT).

#3: Sometimes the Think Small team is drinking from a firehose and cannot keep up… You can check out THREE New Scholarship and Internship opportunities linked below. BUT they will also be added to the Scholarship page in the Students & Families section by November 2, in case you want to share that page with students and faculty you know. Hint, hint.

October 3, 2022 Update:

The news section you are in right now is called Think Small. It is where we publish various news-oriented content; something that demands a longer article usually. But we have not had a way to collect and curate the many cool things that you – MNT partners, members, educators and students, and others, occasionally want to share.

Welcome to the new series I’m tentatively calling “Random Small” to provide us with a bucket, and I mean that in the most positive way, in which to put these important, but shorter tips, job or internship postings, upcoming events that we didn’t have a chance to get on the calendar (yet), and other, well, random items that need a home. You get the idea and here’s a few for this first post.

Normandale Community College is considering offering an 8-week section of its “Foundations of Vacuum Science” online course (VACT 1010). This course is designed for individuals who are interested in pursuing a career as a technician whose role it will be to support maintenance and troubleshooting of vacuum systems. The start date for this class would be Monday, October 17th, and the class would conclude by mid-December.
- If you have a prospective student or others in your networks, especially organizational contacts. They can contact Kim Klein (Kimberly.Klein@normandale.edu) if interested in this class. Kim will be able to help them with the registration process.

Every year the NNCI has the “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” photo contest. Lots of great entries and if you receive our email newsletter, then you saw the hedgehog photo, which was a Most Whimsical winner from last year, which is from:Artist: Evgeniya Moiseeva, Huson Lab, University of Louisville. Tool: Thermo Scientific Apreo C SEM. Description: Solidified droplets of Gold on the side of the E-Beam evaporation ceramic crucible.

We continue to update our YouTube channel Undergraduate Research Playlist which includes professional development workshops and presentations. Check it out.

On our MNT LinkedIn page, you will find updates on colleagues, job listings, internship and apprenticeship opportunities, and more. Plus, as you’ve read above, we’re trying to include many of those items here on Random Small. The linked post takes you to a recent University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering job for a Nanofabrication Lab Technician.
- Note: We are considering a jobs/internship/career-oriented email on a 2 to 4 times per month basis. If you are interested, drop TJ an email. Again, we do post some of these on LinkedIn.

The MNT Calendar has the latest workshops and professional development webinars that you may find informative or worth sharing with your students and colleagues.

more tk

Thanks,

TJ McCue, Editor

P.S. Feel free to drop me an email note if there’s something you think we should know about.

Summer Internships and Beyond

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