The University of Central Arkansas will offer a week-long workshop involving Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) on two occasions during Summer, 2006.

Up to six (6) high school students will be selected to participate in each workshop. Each high school student participant will be teamed up with a UCA science undergraduate at the start of a workshop. After learning some background about the instrument and its operation, each student team will then focus on obtaining publication-quality images of designated portions of the body surface of a selected model organism, such as the sea urchin Lytechinus. The eventual goal is to publish a Body Surface Atlas for the selected organism, based on the images obtained over several workshops built around this focus. In addition to sharing authorship of the Body Surface Atlas once completed, workshop participants will receive a certificate of training, and copies of all images obtained.

Participants in the summer SEM workshops will be responsible for their own transportation to Lewis Science Center on the UCA campus. Workshop hours will be from 9 am until 4:30 pm daily, and several lunch options will be available. The workshop will be taught by UCA faculty.

Thanks to support by The Toyota USA Foundation, there is no charge to participants for the workshops. The SEM Facility was established with National Science Foundation support.

Applications are now being accepted, and application review and selection will begin May 6th. The application and reference form can be downloaded by visiting the Maps, Flyers, and Forms page.