------------------------------------ Answers to frequently asked questions about SIP ------------------------------------ - Basic principle: Being a primary SIP mentor means involving one or more high-school students (SIP interns) in your *research*. The intern(s) should help you carry out a research project that you are leading and working on and need to get done soon. It should *not* be something you have made up just for the intern, it shouldn't be an exercise - it needs to be an actual research project. The idea is for the experience to have *mutual* benefit - to the intern and to the mentor. The SIP intern benefits from the experience of being immersed in a research project and learns sophisticated research techniques, understands the broader context of her/his project within the overall scientific discipline, and, most importantly, becomes familiar with the sociology of collaborative research. The mentor's research project is helped by the intern's contribution. - Who can be a mentor?: You don't have to be a UCSC faculty member to be a primary SIP mentor. Most primary SIP mentors are PhD students or postdocs at UCSC - but they do have the approval/blessings/cooperation of their faculty adviser in their role as a SIP mentor so please contact your faculty adviser about your being a SIP mentor. The main criterion is you have to be actively engaged in scientific research and leading a project (see above). Undergraduates may serve as secondary SIP mentors, but not as primary mentors. In other words, undergraduates may assist the PhD student, postdoc, or faculty member who is serving as their senior thesis adviser in the mentoring of SIP interns. - Laboratory safety training: If the mentor's research involves working in a laboratory setting, it is important to consider: (a) whether there are any age restrictions for the SIP interns (e.g., have to be 16 before June 1) and (b) what laboratory safety training the SIP interns must undergo. The mentor's department must arrange for the SIP interns' laboratory safety training; SIP administrative staff are happy to provide some logistical support for this training. - Pre-requisite coursework: The mentor should consider whether it is required/recommended for the SIP interns to have taken certain certain classes (e.g., basic high-school biology or AP biology or equivalent) before the start of the summer internship. - Duration, dates, and format of the summer program: Most SIP interns commit to working at least 8 weeks during the summer. Most mentors prefer that the student work full-time all summer. A few interns prefer shorter term projects - as short as 4 weeks - as do some SIP mentors. A typical project starts around the second week of June as soon as the school term ends and continues until mid August (the SIP final presentations are scheduled for Sat Aug 17) - with possible breaks in between. For each project, the SIP intern(s) and their mentors typically tailor the exact duration and pace of the project according to their mutual convenience to work around their summer travel schedules. Some students live on campus during the summer for up to 8 weeks - others commute daily. The housing and transportation logistics are handled by the SIP program administrators. One thing to consider is whether the work on the research project requires the SIP intern to be on campus the majority of the time (this tends to be true for projects based on laboratory experiments) or is some portion of the work can be conducted remotely (e.g., this is true for many of the astronomical data analysis projects). - One versus two or three SIP interns to a research project: Many SIP mentors have found it advantageous to work with small groups of 2-3 SIP interns instead of just one per project. The interns learn a lot from each other making it less work for the mentor. It also teaches the interns the value of collaboration. - Post-summer activities: The official end date of the SIP program is Sat Aug 17, the final presentation day. There are at least three items that extend beyond this date. First, some SIP interns opt to write up their research project as a paper for the nationwide Siemens science competition (due early Oct) and/or the Intel Science Talent Search (due mid Nov). They consult their mentors (and, in some cases, their school science teachers) as they write their paper. Second, the results from the SIP project are often worthy of publication as a poster at a professional society (e.g., American Astronomical Society) meeting and/or as a journal article and this naturally involves the SIP mentors (who are typically the lead authors on these journal articles with the SIP interns among the coauthors). Third, SIP interns who will be a rising seniors during the summer typically ask their primary mentor for letters of recommendation for college. - History and track record of SIP: The SIP program started in the summer of 2009 when three rising seniors from the Harker School in San Jose worked on their respective astronomy research projects with me. The numbers have grown exponentially since that time with 15 SIP interns in 2010, 29 in 2011, and 43 in 2012. Twenty different schools were represented in the 2012 edition of SIP. Many SIP interns have gone on to garner honors in the Siemens and Intel national science competitions. They also enjoy an outstanding record of college placements. - Which high schools do SIP interns come from?: SIP has a formal partnership with two Bay Area schools: The Harker School in San Jose, CA and Castilleja School in Palo Alto, CA, an all-girls school. The partnership means these school's science staff help us with SIP intern selection from their school. However, SIP is open to all schools and we're proud to have had students from a few dozen of the best public, private, and charter schools in the Bay Area. A small fraction of the students have been from other parts of the state and we have even had a couple of out-of-state / international SIP interns. ------------------------------------