Below I pass along an announcement for a very cool week-long summer science program at Notre Dame for middle school students. NDeRC’s Enviro collaboration organized a day-long session in this event last year, and we had a blast. Send this announcement along to middle school students and their parents, cementing your friendship with them for life:)

This year’s Sensing Our World: Science Through Time program will explore themes from Earth’s past, present, and future in biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and geology. Scientific processes occuron time scales from nanoseconds to eons. In the blink of an eye, cells can divide and a hummingbird can flap its wings almost 90 times! At much lengthier time scales, continents move and animals go extinct, like the dinosaurs. Scientists often look to the past to understand the world today. Also, by understanding current processes and trends, they make predictions about the future.

The week will involve hands-on science, including exploring the structure of skeletons at the Museum of Biodiversity, immersing ourselves in nature to understand the complexities of ecosystems, and tackling issues related to climate change –such as, what should we do for polar bears if all the sea ice melts? We hope you’ll join professors and graduate students during this exciting week on the campus of Notre Dame, so complete the application today!

Classes will be held at the Notre Dame campus Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Activities include meeting with ND scientists to learn about their research, and visits to several different academic departments and research labs on campus. We expect a large response to the summer program, so please read through the instructions carefully. The deadline for applications is May 13, 2011. Applications are reviewed by a selection committee, and students will be admitted to the week’s hands-on science exploration program. Selection notices will be e-mailed to students by June 1, 2011.

SPONSORS

Sensing Our World 2011: Science Through Time is supported and sponsored by
•The Siemens Foundation
•The Northern Indiana Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Consortium (NISMEC)
•The Joint Institute for Astrophysics (JINA) and the Nuclear Structure Laboratory
•The Department of Biological Sciences
•The Department of Physics
•The College of Science