linguistics research opportunities for high school students

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Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars (SLIYS)

SLIYS - Dissecting language one piece at a time

The Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars (SLIYS) is a one- or two-week online summer program for high school students organized by the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. SLIYS introduces students with an interest in foreign languages to the scientific study of language. Participants will explore how language works on many levels, as well as gain insight into the ways in which individual languages are similar to and different from each other. 

• Explore language from a scientific perspective
• Learn interesting facts about languages, including similarities and differences in sounds, words, and sentence structure
• Discover how linguists gather data about languages through consultations with a native speaker of a foreign language (languages featured in past programs include Chinese, German, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Korean, and more)

"Before SLIYS, I didn’t realize how little I actually knew about linguistics. I knew I enjoyed the subject, and thought I might want to study it in the future, but I wasn’t positive. But after doing SLIYS, I know for sure that I want to study and have a career in linguistics. Thank you so much for this amazing opportunity. I learned so much and had such a good time!" -SLIYS participant (2023)

"I think I got a better understanding of what linguistics is, what linguists do, and more about language than I thought existed. I'm quite happy with the comprehensiveness of SLIYS, and I wished there were other programs in other subjects that did as good of a job as it did at teaching linguistics."  -SLIYS participant (2023)

SLIYS 1 - ONLINE

June 10-14 & july 8-12.

• Introduces foundational topics, including phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics
• Takes place twice, during the months of June and July

SLIYS 2 - ONLINE

June 24-28 & july 15-19.

• Covers more advanced topics within linguistics and language discovery
• Takes place after each week of SLIYS 1 in June and July

Questions? Contact [email protected] .

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The Department of Linguistics is involved in a number of initiatives to introduce the field of Linguistics to U.S. high school students. These initatives will benefit schools and their students, as well as the field of Linguistics itself. The appeal of Linguistics for American high school students includes the following:

• Linguistics offers a uniquely effective medium for STEM education.
• Linguistics offers tools to navigate a multilingual, multicultural world.
• Linguistics offers critical tools and knowledge for foreign language study.
• Linguistics offers a pathway to exciting new careers, such as speech pathology and language technology.
• Linguistics offers opportunities for high school-university collaboration.

Some reference documents on High School Linguistics:

• High School Linguistics: Information for Administrators and Teachers (17 pages)
• Offering a High School Linguistics Course (2 pages/color)
• Offering a High School Linguistics Course (2 pages/bw)
• The AP Linguistics Initiative (by R. Larson, K. Denham and A. Lobeck)
• High school linguistics: a secondary school elective course (by S. Loosen)
• Introducing Linguistics into Your Curriculum (by K. Mason)
• Using Understanding by Design to Build a High School Linguistics Course (A. Plackowski)
• Middle Eastern Languages Summer Institute (MELSI)
• Summer Youth Camp for Computational Linguistics (SYCCL)
• SUTRA ESOL teaching certificate
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Using Linguistics to Connect High-School Students to the World

hen Colton Arney was a senior in high school, his English teacher told him about a program that would help set the trajectory for his UVA career. By the end of that fall, he had become a linguistics champion.

The program, UVA’s Lingletes Linguistic Challenge, is a community-engaged linguistics course in which the UVA students work with Virginia high school students. The Virginia high-school students are led by a team of UVA undergraduates enrolled in Professor Janay Crabtree’s Linguistics 3400/7400 course. Groups of undergraduate students are matched with groups of high school students and in weekly Zoom sessions, the undergraduate students bring in problem sets from their course and break them down for the high school students to understand and practice. The problem sets are based in world languages that are likely unfamiliar to the students, allowing them to study language patterns without the benefit of previous knowledge. 

In 2023, they studied Swahili, Tok Pisin, Gothic, Gaelic, Persian, Japanese, Hebrew, and Dutch. “We are trying to give students a look at the diversity of languages, some of which are severely moribund and have fewer than one thousand speakers left,” Crabtree expounded. The program culminates in a day-long event that brings high school students from all over Virginia to UVA to compete with each other and against each other for the title of Linglete Champion for the year.

This event is inspired by the Linguistic Olympiad International Competition, held every year in a different city across the world. Crabtree wanted to make this kind of program and competition accessible to students who might not otherwise have the opportunity for exposure to linguistics or to a preview of undergraduate study. Among other things, said Crabtree, the intention is to target rural students who might not be aware of the study of linguistics or international competitions such as the Linguistic Olympiad and who, even if they did, may not have the resources for this international travel.

Studying linguistics made the study of language, something that had seemed nebulous before, accessible

Crabtree was once one of these students. “I grew up in an extremely rural town of Smiths Grove, Kentucky and I had never heard of linguistics until I went to college,” she explained. In college, she learned about linguistics and wished she had begun her studies earlier. “Studying linguistics made the study of language, something that had seemed nebulous before, accessible,” she articulated. Now that she is a linguistics expert, she wants to pass on her knowledge to a new generation.

For this academic year, the Lingletes Linguistic Challenge was held on November 11 at UVA’s Lorna Sundberg International Center. The nine competing high school students (out of thirteen who participated in the course) came from four counties and five schools across central Virginia. The winner was Theo Brockman from Western Albemarle High School. Following a lunch with the UVA students, the high-school students participated in a group competition in Armenian, then learned about the 3400 students’ research through their mentoring groups’ research presentations and finally competed in individual competitions in Swahili, Badukh, and Inukitut, with an awards ceremony that followed. Among other things, the students enjoyed getting to meet their group in person, the challenge of the competition, and the collaborative experience.

For the future, Crabtree wants to continue expanding the program, particularly reaching further into the Appalachian region and other remote areas with fewer academic opportunities for K-12 students. Some strategies that they will utilize include getting in touch with the Governor’s School to spread information about the program, continuing to canvas schools and work with the counselors’ association for K-12 schools, and reaching out to UVA Advance, a summer program for high-school students wanting to gain summer college experience. The most important part though, Crabtree said, is the relationships they have developed with previous participants, who can pass on the experience to their peers.

Emily Mellen

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Charlottesville, VA 22904

[email protected]

(434) 924-1932

Exploring Linguistics

In this introductory course in linguistics, we apply investigative tools to the study of human language. We will explore different types of language use, including standard vs. non-standard language, dialects, political speeches, languages from around the world, digital communication and social media. Students will work in groups to research an aspect of language that interests them, culminating in a final project. Knowledge of foreign languages is not required. 

Learning Outcomes

• To gain an introduction to the field of linguistics and its potential applications in various careers or industries  
• To apply the scientific method to the study of language and its uses in the contemporary world
• To develop observational, analytical and problem-solving skills
• To broaden understanding about linguistic differences and ways of thinking about language and culture

Course Topics

Each class begins with a brief lecture on a foundational linguistic concept, followed by a hands-on module in which students work on a research question or solve problem sets together. 

Topic 1. Busting myths and stereotypes about language 

Topic 2. Puzzling patterns: Morphology across the world’s languages  

Topic 3. Accents, dialects, and the fuzzy boundaries of language 

Topic 4. I can’t get no satisfaction: Things we’re not supposed to say 

Topic 5. Political rhetoric: Analyzing patterns in political speeches 

Topic 6. Texts, posts, tweets and slang in social media: Language change and evolution 

Topic 7. Siri, Alexa and Google assistant: AI and language technology ;

Research Project. Students will choose one of the course topics for a final project, and work in small groups to research and analyze linguistic data related to the topic. Examples of final projects: the design and administration of an online or in-person survey; analysis of data collected from on-campus “fieldwork”; plotting maps or graphs from quantitative language data; a comparative study of two political speeches. Research projects culminate in a group presentation on the last day of class. 

Summer Programs

Introduction to linguistics.

A general introduction to the nature, history and use of human language, speech and writing. Topics include the biological basis of human language, and analogous systems in other creatures; relations to cognition, communication, and social organization; sounds, forms and meanings in the world's languages; the reconstruction of linguistic history and the family tree of languages; dialect variation and language standardization; language and gender; language learning by children and adults; the neurology of language and language disorders; the nature and history of writing systems. Intended for any undergraduate interested in language or its use, this course is also recommended as an introduction for students who plan to major in linguistics.

3440 Market Street, Suite 450 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3335

(215) 746-2309 [email protected]

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For further information, please email the Linguistics Department .

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Summer Internship

[closed] 2024 summer internship program, language and cognitive development lab, update:  applications for summer 2024 are now closed (old link) ., we plan on running our summer 2024 internship in-person, pending any changes in covid-19 conditions., program overview, the goal of this program is to provide a comprehensive, hands-on research experience to highly motivated students, while making valuable contributions to cognitive science., our lab explores how linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities arise during human development. a central goal of our research is exploring how these different aspects of development interact with one another., interns will interact with the lab manager, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and each other, and will meet with professor srinivasan to discuss their research. interns will participate in many facets of the research process, such as: assisting with data collection, working on stimuli creation and preparation of study materials, reading relevant theoretical and empirical papers, recruiting participants, and processing or analyzing data. interns will also have the opportunity to test participants at schools and/or children’s museums in the bay area (pending covid-19 regulations). lastly, interns will attend weekly lab meetings and reading groups to discuss the theory behind research projects, and will have the opportunity to present on the projects they are assigned during the internship. we hope that interns will come away from these activities with an enriched understanding of language and cognitive development., this is a 9 week internship program with 30 hours of participation per week (with federal holidays off). the program runs from monday, june 3rd st – friday, august 2nd th 2024. we are willing to accommodate a slightly later start date (~monday, june 17th) if you are on the quarter system or if your school semester ends after may 31 st . we recommend applicants apply for outside funding, but will provide a stipend of $3375 to those who are not able to secure funding to offset living costs. please note that this internship is unpaid however. the stipend is just to offset living costs. please also note that we are unable to assist in finding or providing housing in the bay area..

Lastly, accepted interns will have to pass a background check with fingerprinting as this role involves working with minors.

Who Should Apply?

This program is designed for undergraduates, graduating seniors, and recent graduates who are interested in pursuing graduate work in psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, or related fields and/or students who are interested in doing an undergraduate honors thesis. while we are open to all applicants (including international) who are motivated and fit the requirements, due to processing time and cost constraints, we will be unable to sponsor a visa..

The LCD Lab does not accept high school students into our Summer Internship. If you are interested in working in the lab, please wait to apply until after you are 18 and have enrolled in a college or university.

Qualifications

Requirements: 1) strong interest in language acquisition and/or cognitive development. 2) coursework in: psychology, linguistics, or cognitive science. 3) strong organizational skills and attention to detail. 4) strong communication skills in spoken and written english., additional preferred skills (not required): experience working in a research laboratory. computer programming experience. data analysis experience (r). experience working with children. experience with eye tracking technology (smi). experience with behavioral coding (datavyu). experience with excel and powerpoint. experience with qualtrics and/or amazon’s mechanical turk., how to apply, applications for summer 2024 will be open until thursday, february 1st at 9 am pst., please familiarize yourself with our research, complete the online application, and submit all materials by thursday, february 1st at 9 am pst. applications will be reviewed after this deadline and you will be contacted within one month..

You will need to submit the below materials as well as answer some short answer questions as part of the application: – CV / Resume – Transcript – (Optional) This is optional, but we strongly encourage all applicants to have one or two people serve as references. A reference can be from professors, teaching assistants, instructors, employers, or supervisors. References will only be contacted if your application moves forward.

Please upload your documents in PDF format. Please name your documents as: FirstName_LastName_DocumentName.pdf EXAMPLE: Noah_Davis_CV.pdf.

If you have any questions about the internship, please email our lab manager at lcdmanager[at]berkeley[dot]edu and put “Summer Internship” in the subject line.

Letters of Recommendations:

If you were part of one of our past summer internships and would like a letter of recommendation or a completion certificate, you can find more information here ..

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Below is a listing of programs for high school students conducted by a variety of Carnegie Mellon Faculty, Students and Staff. Click on each program link for contact and general information.

AI Scholars [CMU Pre-College]

AI Scholars (AIS), a  CS Pathways  initiative, is a grant-funded, merit-based program. AIS provides rising high school seniors who have historically been excluded from STEM fields the opportunity to explore artificial intelligence with Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff, and researchers who are leaders in the field.    AI Scholars will take a deep dive into the world of artificial intelligence through a combination of classroom instruction, hands-on research projects, faculty lectures, and industry engagement with leading tech companies around the country.

Contact: Natalie Hatcher, Program Director Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college/academic-programs/ai_scholars.html  

Alice is an innovative block-based programming environment that makes it easy to create animations, build interactive narratives, or program simple games in 3D. Unlike many of the puzzle-based coding applications Alice motivates learning through creative exploration. Alice is designed to teach logical and computational thinking skills, fundamental principles of programming and to be a first exposure to object-oriented programming.The Alice Project provides supplemental tools and materials for teaching using Alice across a spectrum of ages and subject matter with proven benefits in engaging and retaining diverse and underserved groups in computer science education.

Alice is used by teachers at all levels from middle schools (and sometime even younger) to universities, in school classrooms and in after school and out of school programming, and in subjects ranging from visual arts and language arts to the fundamentals of programming and introduction to java courses.

Architecture Explorations

The Architecture Explorations program encourages Pittsburgh youth to look closely at their built environment, be open to creative expression, ask questions, think critically, and understand civic responsibility - all through the lens of architecture. Architecture Explorations is a collection of architecture-based extracurricular and academic enrichment programs for students in kindergarten through high school, offered through Carnegie Mellon's School of Architecture. Our organization partners with several Pittsburgh communities, schools, and museums to provide an array of architecture education programs. Whether you are a student, parent, counselor, teacher, or community organization, we would love to hear from you and help devise a plan to provide a program that is tailored for each appropriate age-group and organization.

Arts Greenhouse

The Arts Greenhouse is a hip-hop music education program for Pittsburgh teens that is affiliated with the Carnegie Mellon’s Studio for Creative Inquiry. With the help of faculty and students, as well as local hip-hop performers, teens write, compose, and then record songs in a state-of-the-art recording studio. Through the process teens develop musical and verbal skills, gain familiarity with historical and contemporary issues, and form connections that open new routes to community participation and to higher education.

Athletic Camps

A variety of camps and clinics are offered each summer. Programs include   FITT Camp for children aged 7-14, soccer camp for children ages 5-14, Learn   to Swim Classes and more!

Be an Engineer

Are you a high school student who is interested in pursuing a future in engineering? Do you want to learn more about it? Then join us at Be an Engineer! This Fall semester program designed especially for students in 9th through 12th grades comprises an overview of Engineering at CMU, a panel discussion and Q&A with CMU Engineering students, and lab tours with current students who are involved in co-curricular organizations and activities. Come get a first-hand look at a variety of engineering disciplines at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering.

Contact: Rita Canton Email: [email protected]   Site:  https://engineering.cmu.edu/education/outreach/programs/be-an-engineer.html

Biological Sciences Outreach Program

Each spring the Department of Biological Sciences Outreach Program hosts high school students from several local districts in southwestern Pennsylvania to participate in hands-on experiments such as a Molecular Biology Transformation Experiment, or designing a project to determine the quantity of protein in a variety of food items. 

The experiences are designed and coordinated by Dr. Carrie Doonan. Carnegie Mellon graduate and undergraduate students assist the high school student teams as they work through each experiment.

CMU CS Academy

CMU CS Academy began when co-founders, and professors in SCS, David Kosbie and Mark Stehlik were approached by Pittsburgh Public School teachers, asking for a computer science curriculum to meet their students' needs.

From those conversations, David and Mark set out to achieve one goal - access for all to high-quality computer science education for anyone who wants it. For that reason CMU CS Academy is, and always will be, free for schools to offer to their students.

The project was initially run as a course on CS Pedagogy in SCS but after the first year that model transitioned to our current model as a non-profit organization at CMU that employs CMU students.

Contact: Erin Cawley Email:  [email protected]   Phone: 412-268-3117 Site:  https://academy.cs.cmu.edu/ ,  https://www.cs.cmu.edu/outreach/programs/cs-academy

CMU Engineering Workshop

Do you know what you want to study in college, or what career you want to pursue? Have you considered engineering? How much do you know about it? Come learn more about what engineers do and what it would be like to study engineering in college at one of the nation's top engineering schools!

Try out real mechanical engineering practices to create your own products!  You will learn how to:

Design your product using computer-aided design (CAD) software

Analyze your product using computer-aided engineering (CAE) software

Fabricate your product using 3D printers, laser cutters, resin casting, and hand-held tools

Learn about other engineering disciplines (electrical, biomedical, robotics, etc.) through daily presentations and tours of CMU labs.

The workshop wants to introduce kids to engineering, so even if you’ve never thought about it before, come for a week to see what it’s all about! This is not a residential program.

Email: [email protected] Phone: (412) 952-5991 Site: https://www.cmuengineeringworkshop.org/

CMU Pre-College

Carnegie Mellon’s Pre-College Summer Programs mirror the undergraduate experience, giving rising high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to explore their interests and passions while receiving instruction from acclaimed Carnegie Mellon faculty and staff. We provide a holistic and robust student experience that includes academic and personal development both inside and outside of the classroom in order to prepare students for the future.

Email:  [email protected] Phone:  (412) 268-5914 Site: https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college

CS Scholars Program [CMU Pre-College]

Computer Science Scholars (CSS), a  CS Pathways  initiative, is a grant-funded, merit-based program. CSS provides rising high school juniors who have historically been excluded from STEM fields the opportunity to explore computer science with Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff, and researchers who are leaders in the field.   CS Scholars will take a deep dive into the world of computer science through a combination of classroom instruction, hands-on research projects, faculty lectures, and industry engagement with leading tech companies around the country.

Contact: Natalie Hatcher Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college/academic-programs/computer-science-scholars.html

Computer Science STEM Network

This learning management system offers hundreds of hours of research-based, outcomes-driven curriculum. Students and teachers can freely use the site to learn and earn badges in a variety of topics, including robotics, computer science and related fields. The site has nearly 27,000 users who have earned more than 2 million achievements.

Contact: Jesse Flot Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.cs2n.org/curriculum

ETC: Entertainment Technology Community

The Educational Technology Community is a unique project of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center made possible through the generous support of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and Grable Foundation. The network focuses on exploring and developing experimental educational initiatives in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Eastern OH through collaboration. 

• Transform teaching and learning approaches by sharing educational applications and curricular innovations developed at the ETC with the community.
• Co-create, develop and deliver teacher and student training in the use of ETC crafted applications and experience.
• Grow Professional Learning Communities of teachers who share their experiences, ideas and expertise while they try new pedagogy, applications, and e-tools.
• Work with school districts, their teachers, and students already using ETC educational application to expand and improve their use in their schools.

Every academic semester the ETC holds a Playtest Day when graduate student teams make available their project work for guests for playtesting. The work is “in progress” with the playtests useful to help improve the final project delivery. The term playtest indicates the use of an experience or game by a guest to see whether it is performing as expected. Guests have in the past tested from three to six projects over the course of two hours, along with an optional tour of the ETC and a meal break that starts off or ends the visit. Some projects have experiences requiring two or more guests at once, while others are meant to be used alone.

Girls of Steel FIRST Robotics Team

FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team 3504, the Girls of Steel, was founded in the fall of 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University's Field Robotics Center. Initially, the team consisted of 24 girls from 12 different schools, and 4 different educational options (homeschool, public school, cyber school, and independent school). The FRC team welcomes applications from girls in grades 9-12 in the greater Pittsburgh area, regardless of financial status. Mentored at CMU by faculty, staff, students, and parent volunteers, the team competes in annual regional FIRST robotics competitions, has received numerous awards, and regularly participates in community outreach events with robot demonstrations and/or activities for children.

The FRC team is running its 12th season this year (2021-2022) with 46 girls from 20 different schools and offers multiple programs such as the 8th/9th grade FIRST Tech Challenge team opportunities as well as FIRST LEGO League Challenge and Explore teams for elementary and middle school students in greater Pittsburgh.  

Mission statement:  Girls of Steel strives to empower everyone, especially women and girls, to believe they are capable of success in STEM.

Mission: The Girls of Steel is more than a robotics program. Our mission goes past building robots for competition; we work hard to give students the skills that will last far beyond their high-school years. * For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology 

Email:  [email protected] or Elizabeth Kysel, Lead Mentor  [email protected] Site:  https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/

Governor’s School for the Physical Sciences

The Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences (PGSS) was established in order to provide a summer enrichment experience in the sciences and mathematics for talented Pennsylvania high school students and to encourage them to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering or mathematics. The program provides instruction in biological sciences, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science, with emphasis on collaborative learning and team research.

PGSS is an ungraded summer enrichment program which is in session for five weeks, seven days per week. All students are required to live on the CMU campus in a college dormitory. It is an intense program in which the students take lecture courses in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science. In addition, they are expected to participate in their choice of one laboratory course in either biology, chemistry, physics, or computer science, and to engage in team research projects in one of the above five major discipline areas. The students also have the opportunity to take elective courses which may vary from year to year, to participate in several field trips, and to be further enriched by a distinguished guest lecture series.

The program costs are supported by the PGSS Campaign, Inc. - alumni, parents, and friends of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences who have generously provided funds to make this year's PGSS program possible.

LEAP: Leadership, Excellence, Access, Persistence

LEAP is an educational partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and  City Charter High School  that uses the arts, humanities, and social sciences to empower under-resourced high school students to become agents of social change. It provides a supportive, non-hierarchical learning environment for students to engage with issues of equity and justice in their lives and communities. 

In this year-round program, students learn with and from local artists, activists, and CMU faculty who are working to create positive change in the world. They participate in hands-on learning experiences focused on personal reflection, artistic expression, and civic engagement. Students work individually and collectively to cultivate self-efficacy, a love of learning and creating, and the confidence to envision and build a better future. LEAP works alongside City Charter High School to help students construct a plan for their lives after high school and then acquire the resources they need to achieve their goals.

Contact: Sarah Ceurvorst Email: [email protected] Site:  https://www.cmu.edu/leap/

Linguistics Olympiad

This olympiad is a contest in which high-school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving the problems, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent cutting edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.

There is NO participation fee!

NREC Tours for Schools and Educational Organizations

The National Robotics Engineering Center provides tours for schools and groups to show kids the real-world application of the robotics concepts they learn in school. Participants see all of the robots and technology that the centers develops for use out in the world from different sectors like agriculture, defense, maintenance and more. *NREC has restrictions and a process to sign-in due to it being a secure research facility.*

Contact: Vu Nguyen Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.nrec.ri.cmu.edu/index.html

OpenSimon Tools

Improve learning outcomes for individual learners while collectively advancing our larger understanding of human learning.

The vision behind OpenSimon is a more integrated and easier-to-use toolkit, used and expanded by a larger community of educators to drive deliberate, iterative improvements in education. This approach supports educators as citizen scientists, and helps the people who support them — at universities and companies that make educational products — provide help that is grounded in the science of learning.

Contact: Erin Czerwinski Email: [email protected] Phone:  412-268-8577 Site:  https://www.cmu.edu/simon/open-simon/toolkit/tools/index.html

Physics Outreach

The  CMU Physics Department offers a variety of Outreach opportunities for high school students that can be done remote, onsite at schools, and/or onsite at CMU. Topics include: General Physics Topics, Astronomy and Cosmology, Biology & Physics, Coding & Computational Physics, and Partical & Nuclear Physics. 

This free computer security gamified education program offers original educational content built on a capture-the-flag framework created by CMU security and privacy experts. Learners of all skill levels gain access to a safe and unique hands-on experience as they reverse-engineer, break, hack, decrypt, and think creatively and critically to solve challenges and capture digital flags. They learn and practice cybersecurity principles with picoCTF's noncompetitive features, then put their skills to the test in one of picoCTF's hacking competitions.

Contact: Megan Kearns Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://picoctf.org/

Project Ignite

Project Ignite is a student-run outreach organization at Carnegie Mellon University offering an interdisciplinary project-based educational program for high school students in the greater Pittsburgh area. Ignite provides a valuable opportunity for students to work in a team and gain hands-on experience planning and executing a project with funding for materials provided to each group. The vision is that all students, regardless of socioeconomic standing or prior academic achievement, will have the opportunity to participate in the program. The ultimate goals are to expose students to subject areas that they would otherwise be unable to explore, and to allow students to pursue a new or existing interest that they lack the knowledge and/or support to engage with on their own.

High school students meet with their project advisors for a weekly 3 hour workshop over a 10 week period during the spring semester. The majority of project work is done during these workshops, though students continue to work on the project throughout the week. At the end of the 10 week program, the high school students present their projects to friends, family, and the Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh communities in a project showcase.

Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://projectignitecmu.org/

Robotics Academy: Robotics Camps, Clubs, and Competitions

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy (CMRA) is a research, development, and outreach component of the Robotics Institute. CMRA studies how educators can use robots to teach Computer Science, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CS-STEM). Their mission is to use the educational affordances of robotics to create CS-STEM opportunities for all learners. They fulfill their mission by developing research-based solutions that are classroom-tested and foreground CS-STEM concepts.

CMRA offers programs that include teacher training, curriculum, virtual tools, and certifications for both K-12 Robotics Education and Workforce Development. They collaborate with regional and national community to bring their programs to underserved populations in sustainable ways. All programs are delivered through their CS-STEM Network learning management system which enables educators to create free accounts and track participant progress.

Contact: Jesse Flot E-mail:  [email protected] Phone: (412) 681-7160 Site:   https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/

Robotics Education Lab

The Robotics Education Lab is a central resource to support courses and individual projects. Equipment includes manipulators, mobile robots, electronics & mechanical fabrication benches, Lego, a video editing workstation, machine vision systems, and more.

Anyone affiliated with CMU and interested in robotics is welcome. Stop by and see what the lab has to offer. Lab address: Newell-Simon Hall 3206 x8-5561.

Robotics Merit Badge (Merit Badge University)

This programs gives young BSA scouts the opportunity to earn the Robotics Merit Badge as part of Alpha Phi Omega's Merit Badge University days.

Contact: Vu Nguyen E-mail:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.cs.cmu.edu/outreach/programs/robotics-merit-badge

SAMS: Summer Academy for Math and Science

As SAMS Scholars, students engage in a rigorous curriculum taught by CMU faculty and staff who are deeply committed to student success. The program allows students to develop a deeper understanding of STEM via traditional classroom instruction, through hands-on projects, and sustained engagement with world-renowned faculty and skilled staff mentors. In addition to their academic experiences, students also have the opportunity to collaborate and develop meaningful relationships with peers from across the country.

High school students must apply. High school sophomores and juniors from underrepresented communities will develop a deeper understanding in areas such as mathematics, biology, and physics at SAMS. 

Contact: Roshawn Lang E-mail:  [email protected]   Site:  https://www.cmu.edu/pre-college/academic-programs/sams.html  

SEE: Summer Engineering Experience

The Summer Engineering Experience (SEE) is a week-long summer experience for students between the ages of 13-16 who are interested in math and science. SEE gives students hands-on experience in different forms of engineering.

SMART-ER works with local Pittsburgh community organizations in underserved areas to train members of organizations to teach youth and young adults the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for robotics technician positions. This PA Registered Pre-Apprenticeship Robotic Technician program consists of five microcertifications focusing on five foundational areas: mechanical, electrical, software, fabrication and robotics integration. Programs include free training for the trainers, initial materials and support for a successful program. The program has reached over 200 participants in more than eight communities.

Contact: Vu Nguyen E-mail:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/Research/SMARTER.html

SPARK Saturdays

SPARK Saturdays is a Saturday workshop series created by volunteers studying Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University that aims to introduce beginners to concepts about electrical and computer engineering and expose them to engineering as a potential career choice.  Topics include, but are not limited to, Mechanical Logic, Programming, Smart Light, and Radio Building.

SPARK Saturdays is structured to be six sessions, held on campus about every other Saturday. Each session lasts two hours and consist of a learning portion and a hands-on activity, led by CMU students. The entire SPARK Saturdays series is held once every semester, and aimed at high school students. No prior knowledge on the part of the students is assumed. The sessions are structured to introduce students to a wide variety of electrical and computer engineering concepts to help them decide whether this might be a good career path for them.

Mobile Labs is an adaptation of SPARK Saturdays, still geared toward high school students, but brought to schools. The labs are typically held after school for interested students.

Dozens of students participate in each program annually; approximately 20 each semester for SPARK.

Email:  [email protected] Site: http://eceoutreach.ece.cmu.edu/

STEM Junction Symposium

SCS partners with this annual student-run symposium at Fox Chapel Area High School. It has a focus on computational biology.

Contact: Phillip Compeau E-mail:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.cs.cmu.edu/outreach/programs/stem-junction

SUCCEED is a 5-day program for rising 10th graders that is designed to complement what students have studied in school and provide you with opportunities to expand your understanding of energy, the environment, and how those relate to climate change. At the end of the program, the student will be able to answer a variety of question related to these topics, such as: What is climate change? What is the role of engineering to solve the climate change challenge? Where & how is your electricity generated? What careers could you have in climate, energy, or the environment? The program includes a variety of experiments, field trips and activities organized by PhD students from Carnegie Mellon University.

Contact:  [email protected] Phone: (412) 256-8162  Site:  https://cedmcenter.org/succeed/  

SWE: Society of Women Engineers High School Day

High School Day is an annual event in which approximately 250 Pittsburgh high school girls are invited to CMU’s campus. It is one of our largest outreach events and collaborates with CMU professors and students from various campus organizations. The girls are able to participate in activities related to electrical, mechanical, civil, biomedical, material science, and chemical engineering. The event aims to help young girls get a better idea of what engineering entails and offers them guidance and advice for pursuing engineering. At the same time, it allows CMU students and faculty to share their knowledge and passion for engineering and inspire young women. The event has been a great success in the past and continues to grow. Each year, we have had more and more students participate in the event and we expect the trend to continue for next year.

Voices Against Violence (VAV) Robotics Initiative

VAV delivers a beginner and intermediate robotics course to summer camp participants. The students also learn elementary programming skills, which they continue to learn throughout the year via in-school and after-school delivery. The program develops digital literacy while providing safe spaces for vulnerable youth during out-of-school time.

Email:  [email protected] Site:  https://www.vavpgh.org/

Yale Linguistics

You are here, linguistics research opportunities at yale.

Undergraduates have many opportunities to do research in the department with individual faculty or research groups, some of which are listed here. See also the list of labs  for other opportunities.

Claire Bowern

I regularly have paid positions to work on various aspects of historical linguistics, typology, and language documentation, particularly in relation to Australian languages. Current projects include work on color terms, flora and fauna borrowing, how kinship terms change, how numeral systems evolve, and how sound systems differ. Students work on a project for an entire year, ideally taking it through from developing the research question to writing a journal article.

Several undergraduates have published articles resulting from their research projects. The lab meets regularly and includes both undergraduate and graduate students. Further information about grant activities can be found at pamanyungan.net.

Both paid positions and independent study are an option. The projects are designed to make the most of students’ backgrounds, so as such, there is no compulsory background preparation; however, the students who have got the most out of their research projects have taken one or more of the following classes: historical linguistics, Australian languages, field methods, or a class in evolution.

Please contact me in the spring if you’re interested: claire.bowern@yale.edu

Computational linguistics applies the tools of computer science to the study of human language. My own work, and that of students with whom I work, focuses on questions ranging from the theoretical (why is human grammar structured in the way that it is?) to the psychological (how can we build a computational model of language acquisition or sentence processing?) to the applied (what role can ideas from formal linguistics play in the construction of systems for natural language processing tasks such as summarization, parsing or machine translation?).  Students are involved in existing projects, or work with me  to develop new directions for research.  Students who work with me typically come with solid programming and math skills and/or background in linguistic theory (especially syntax and semantics).

In addition to involvement in research projects, undergraduates also participate in the Computational Linguistics at Yale (CLAY) group.  This inter-departmental group, which includes undergraduates, graduates and faculty, meets weekly, to talk about on-going research by group members, and also to explore topics of interest to the group at large. 

If you are interested in becoming involved, or if you have any questions about this area, contact me, Bob Frank, at bob.frank@yale.edu .

Maria Piñango

I have an ongoing research project that seeks to understand how semantic phenomena and semantic composition can be understood in terms of the mind and the brain. Students who are interested in getting research experience in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics are invited to apply to get a chance to do a rotation in the lab. These start as unpaid positions and depending on your commitment, investment, and contribution may transition into paid positions.

Recommended background for working in the lab (at least one the following):

• Language and Mind
• Morphology/Syntax 
• Neurolinguistics
• Historical Linguistics
• Any seminar taught by me

At my lab students have participated at a least two levels of responsibility:

1) Paid research assistant. This usually takes place in the summer, and the student gets some exposure to lab work while participating in one or two of the ongoing projects assigned by the lab director. No previous experience is generally required but a strong commitment to research is expected.

2) Rotation research fellow. This entails specific participation in an ongoing research project, or a project that is about to begin. This is generally not a paid position because here the objective is for the student to obtain specific research experience. So, there is a lot of training involved, and the student is expected to do some written work at the end of the project. This possibility is usually done as a directed research course. In this case, even though lab experience is not required, some basic background in linguistic theory is, and an ability to read and comprehend primary literature on fundamental issues in experimental linguistics is expected. 

So, in general, the students who do rotations or are hired for pay in the lab have a keen interest in syntax and semantics (the domain foci of the lab) and would like to explore the experimental side of those subfields. 

For more information please contact Maria Piñango at maria.pinango@yale.edu

Both paid positions and independent study options are available in the phonetics lab starting in summer 2017. Students gain hands-on training in designing, running and analyzing experiments, including Electromagnetic Articulography and Ultrasound experiments to investigate speech articulation and eye-tracking to investigate the time course of speech perception.

Helpful background includes coursework in phonetics, phonology, statistics, signal processing and cognitive psychology (particularly experimental methods).

Interested students should contact  jason.shaw@yale.edu  for more information.

Natalie Weber

My main empirical focus is on Blackfoot and Algonquian languages in general. I study aspects of phonology, prosody, morphology, and the phonology-syntax interface, with a secondary focus on historical linguistics. 

Starting in Summer 2020 I will have part-time  paid  positions available for students at all levels of background.  If you are interested, please send me an email at natalie.weber@yale.edu with the following info: your name, year, major(s), and why you are interested in these projects. 

Current projects include: creating databases of words in older dictionaries and grammars, working with existing fieldwork materials, time-aligning and annotating Blackfoot recordings, glossing stories, and more. There is room for other related projects as well, including independent research on different aspects of the Blackfoot language, developing language learning/teaching materials, working through the grammar together, and more. 

Yale Grammatical Diversity Project

People often think of variation in American English in terms of lexical items or phonology. For the last several years, this project has been devoted to exploring variation in grammatical constructions. You might can visit our  Yale Grammatical Diversity Project website  to get a sense of what we work on and what the project is about.

Our group consists of undergraduate, graduate students and faculty.  We meet every other week, discuss constructions we ‘re interested in and think about how they relate to what we know about English grammar.  We collaborate in preparing the pages that make up our website, as well as in working out analyses for the phenomena we study.

For more information contact Jim Wood at  jim.wood@yale.edu  or Raffaella Zanuttini at  raffaella.zanuttini@yale.edu

Haskins Laboratories

Scientists at Haskins Laboratories conduct research on spoken and written language and the biological basis for language and reading. Take a look at the website of individual researchers, see what they are working on, maybe even read a paper they wrote, and contact them directly to ask for a research opportunity. You can attach your CV and you should include a little bit of relevant background in your email (for example, mention your major if you have decided on it and courses you have taken that might be relevant to the project you are emailing about).

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Any questions about the undergraduate program can be directed to the DUS below.

Linguistics, Cognitive Science summer research opportunities for high schoolers?

I’m a high school junior considering majoring in linguistics and/or cognitive science in college. I seek to gain work, education, or volunteer experience relevant to these fields of study before applying to college in order to help me better decide whether I do in fact want to seriously consider pursuing them or related fields, as well as perhaps show strong evidence of my interest in these fields to schools I apply to if I end up indicating one of them as my intended major field on my applications.

With a love for research work and a potential interest in an eventual academic career, I would especially like to gain experience in linguistics or cognitive/science-related research projects. Relevant opportunities local to where I live in central New Hampshire unfortunately seem to be nonexistent, and I would therefore need to temporarily live somewhere else to pursue this type of work, and I would likely only be able to do so this summer.

I’m writing to see if anyone on this forum might be able to recommend any relevant fellowships or internships that might be worth my while to apply to, as well as labs, centers, professors, or other research professionals to reach out to? I’m willing to go anywhere on Earth if I can make it work! I would be able to offer to any projects I work on skills gained from significant relevant experience in my education studying and receiving high grades in language and cognition-related subject material, including in IB-diploma psychology, digital technology, theory of knowledge, beginning Spanish, intermediate Latin, and French and English literature courses; paid work experience in digital information management projects I’ve completed in a job at my town’s public library; volunteering I’ve done in archives classification and digitization at a history museum and in assisting coordinating ESL and Buddhist meditation programs at a church my family attends, and music performance and composition for several different choruses I’ve belonged to. I would ideally like to be paid for my efforts but I’m also interested in learning about potential unpaid opportunities. I would really appreciate learning whatever recommendations anyone might be able to provide me.

I was JUST looking at a list of available linguistics internships and wondering when it would come in handy for someone. But I will have to find the printout to see where it came from.

In the meantime, take a look at Linguistlist https://linguistlist.org/internship/

Linguistic research with human subjects might be harder but data processing, annotating data, that kind of thing might be open to you. You might be able to do something online, too. There are volunteer data projects that are remote as well if you cannot be accommodated as an in-person researcher.

There are Linguistics summer schools aimed at researchers (undergrad through professional rank) but I don’t know if they would take a high school student.

How close are you to Boston?

If you look at course offerings in linguistics, some of them involve the study of young children and non-English speakers and how they acquire language skills. So working with either of these groups could offer experience relevant for linguistics.

OSU has summer programs in both Cognitive Science and Linguistics: http://u.osu.edu/fowler.40/ and https://linguistics.osu.edu/sliys

Back to Research-Based Educational Programs

Wolfram High School Summer Research Program

Formerly known as the Wolfram High School Summer Camp

Bentley University , Boston, MA June 25–July 13, 2024

A project-based research opportunity for motivated high-school students to move beyond the cutting edge of computational thinking and artificial intelligence.

The Wolfram High School Summer Research Program is an intensive two-week program designed to advance high-school students' programming and problem-solving skills. Through a curriculum of active-learning activities, hands-on workshops and lectures, students explore the power of modern computation and deep dive into STEM fields while gaining mastery of Wolfram Language, computational thinking and research skills.

Under the guidance of expert mentors, students research and implement solutions to cutting-edge problems selected in collaboration with Stephen Wolfram. Projects are novel contributions to the field and are personalized to the students' interests and skill sets. Each student writes a computational essay and an interactive research paper and publishes their work at the end of the program. Successful projects can be submitted to STEM competitions, turned into academic papers or presented at the Wolfram Technology Conference.

This program was brilliant for research, and I got to meet so many great, qualified people here at Wolfram. From selecting my project topic with Stephen Wolfram to talking with my mentor about technical concepts and my college trajectory, I gained so much knowledge from this program.

Hyunjae Chung

This was not only an academically enriching experience but also an introduction to an incredibly bright community of dedicated, driven and kind people. Perhaps even more important than the practical skills gained and excellent work that each student came away with from their projects, this program was an opportunity to connect like-minded and truly passionate students and experts from around the world and develop lasting connections.

Victor Zhou

I'm so glad I was given this experience. I now know that it's very possible to explore on your own and make your own projects. We were given the opportunity to talk with so many knowledgeable people who answered so many of our questions, no matter how technical or philosophical.

Arianna Cao

After the summer, successful students enter our ecosystem of education opportunities. This may include doing an advanced project at the Wolfram Emerging Leaders Program , joining our teaching team, connecting with professional mentors or engaging with fundamental physics and metamathematics research at the Wolfram Institute . Particularly successful students are invited to complete internships at Wolfram Research.

We are seeking motivated high-school students interested in solutions-driven research and creating innovative technology. As we are committed to enabling ambitious students, regardless of background or resources, we provide needs-based scholarships and offer a pre-programming workshop for students with limited coding experience.

Featured Projects

Generating animated guitar tutorials

My project uses chords or MIDI files as input and creates an animated tutorial video. My implementation finds the pitches that match a chord on the fretboard in a localized area. To account for some commonly used patterns, I use the CAGED system on guitar. This project also includes an implementation of major scale patterns and tab sheet implementation.

Nikhil Mani

Class of 2023

Multiway sequential cellular automata

The study of cellular automata is useful for modeling many evolving systems. In my project, I examine a novel variant of cellular automata that uses sequential updating with multiple sets of rules, resulting in multiway sequential cellular automata. This structure has the potential for modeling many aspects of quantum mechanics, including possibly quantum spin chains. A deeper exploration highlights the impact of specific subsets of multiway circular sequential cellular automata rules on the directionality, behavior, symmetry and causal invariance of the resulting states graphs.

Margaux Wong

Class of 2022

Generate Super Mario Bros. levels

Super Mario Bros. is one of the top-selling video games of all time and is known for its excellently designed platforming levels, which pioneered the platforming video game genre. My project uses a convolutional neural network to help determine whether an array is a Mario level and to generate them using levels from Super Mario Bros. and its sequel Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.

Samion Suwito

Implementing counter machines

The objective of this project was to implement counter machines in Wolfram Language and establish which counter machine was the most unpredictable. I designed a general counter machine function and used this function to demonstrate five types of counter machines. I determined which counter machines were unpredictable and explored complexity by adding more registers.

Samikshaa Natarajan

Class of 2021

Building a graph-based reaction network

When performing syntheses in a lab, it can be challenging to find the shortest path and to avoid exceptions and pitfalls. A computational system for predicting synthesis pathways can help take the burden off of a chemist and can allow for more consistent results. By transcribing common reactions computationally and applying them recursively, a network can be generated to inform decisions in the lab. My project focused on building the groundwork for this in Wolfram Language, providing informative and computationally significant results and paving the way for comprehensive computational synthesis design.

Joseph Stocke

Automatic Metrical Scansion of Latin Poetry in Dactylic Hexameter

Many significant works of Latin poetry follow the format of dactylic hexameter, meaning that each line is composed of some combination of six metrical feet, each of which is either two long syllables or a long syllable followed by two short syllables. Scansion is the process of identifying the pattern of syllable lengths. Through this project, I use machine learning to scan lines of Latin poetry in dactylic hexameter.

Class of 2019

Colorful Fraud: Exposing Vulnerabilities in Neural Networks

In a day and age where many consider deep learning an off-the-shelf solution to any and all classification/prediction problems, it's important that people examine whether their neural network models are vulnerable to targeted attacks. This project implements a framework for generating adversarial examples: input data crafted to cause the neural network to produce unexpected or targeted incorrect behavior.

Projects From the Wolfram Summer Research Program

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7 University of Pennsylvania Summer Programs for Ambitious High School Students

• Last modified 2024-08-15
• Published on 2024-08-15

1. What Summer Programs Does UPenn Offer for High School Students?

The University of Pennsylvania offers 7 summer programs for high school students across 5 schools: Penn SAS High School Programs, Wharton (Business School), Carey (Law School), Penn Management, and Penn Engineering Schools. The programs range in price and length (2, 3, or 6 weeks), but they reflect an Ivy League institution’s intensity, rigor, student care, and prestigious reputation. Admission into UPenn’s summer programs is highly selective, so participating in one would do a lot to show your enthusiasm and academic competence on your college applications.

2. What’s Special About Penn Summer Programs?

University of Pennsylvania is well-known for being unique in its focus on interdisciplinary study. “The university recognizes that knowledge doesn’t exist in silos and the traditional link between a certain major and career is coming undone.” This is reflected in Penn Summer Prep. The highlight of these programs is the ability for students to traverse across multiple disciplines and become well-rounded in both humanities and STEM. Courses are interdisciplinary and help students develop a wide range of critical thinking and analytical skills necessary and applicable to select fields and all industries/majors. Penn Summer Prep is for the all-rounder, high-achieving students who excel in humanities and STEM. Another excellent example is the Management & Technology Science Institute, recognizing the important emergence of Engineering Management, which highlights the necessity to combine engineering knowledge/skills with management. Read about these programs and more below!

Out of all the Ivy Leagues, University of Pennsylvania r eceives the most government grant money to conduct research . This reflects in the multitude of intense, resourceful, and highly rewarding high school research programs offered in University of Pennsylvania Summer Academies. UPenn’s superior reputation for research and faculty as one of the largest producers of published scholarly research in the world makes Penn Summer Academies a very special option for students interested in STEM research.

Rarely do you see opportunities for high school students to experience law school first-hand. Penn offers this the Carey Law Pre-College Academy, allowing eager high achieving high school students to jumpstart their interest in American law, and see if law school is truly the right path for them before considering a pre-law track in college.

3. What are Penn Summer Academies?

Penn Summer Academies offers students the chance to dive deep into one topic with the esteemed UPenn faculty, long-standing professionals in the field, and receive support from graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants. Topics include American Sign Language, biomedical research, coding, chemistry, experimental physics, global culture and media, mathematics, neuroscience, and social justice. These intensive, three-week programs are residential and not for college credit. Take a glimpse at select offerings:

Biomedical Research Academy – Students explore biology relevant to diseases. Unique to Penn, the biomedical research program includes a Journal Club where students learn to analyze and critique peer-reviewed research articles. Regular classes include lectures, research talks, lab experiments, and small group investigations. Students get a first-hand view of ongoing research conducted at Penn in state-of-the-art research labs with cutting-edge technology.

Coding Academy – Students learn front-end web development through the programming languages HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Students also learn to use popular programming tool GitHub. Starting right off the bat from week 1, students begin to build their own webpages, and by the end of the program, students will have created their own stunning, aesthetic web applications.

Experimental Physics Research Academy – Through lectures, activities, projects, discussions, and research talks given by Penn faculty members, the Penn Experimental Physics Research Academy guides students through kinematics, electricity, nuclear physics, modern physics, and quantum mechanics. Students will also learn about the philosophy of science, experimental design, choosing education paths, and the ethics of science.

Neuroscience Research Academy – Students research a wide range of neuroscience topics, from the cellular foundations of the brain to the sensory systems. Students learn how these elements create memory, emotion, and morality. The neuroscience academy also has a Journal Club that functions much like the biomedical academy’s and a unique Neuroethics Club that debates current ethical dilemmas in neuroscience. Outside of the regular classroom instruction, students will conduct lab experiments and attend field trips to Mütter Museum and Franklin Institute.

July 6 – July 27, 2024 (three weeks)

Applications due February 15, 2024

Who is eligible to apply?

9 th -11 th grade students with a minimum 3.3 GPA. International students are welcome.

$9,700 for all programs (except ASL: $5,500)

Application Requirements

The application requires a $75 application fee, a high school transcript, one letter of recommendation, and two 400-word essays. Essay topics relate to your academic and personal goals and growth in non-academic experiences. Global Culture Academy and ASL Academy have supplemental essays.

Penn Summer Scholarship for School District of Philadelphia public or charter high school. No financial aid is available.

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4. What is Penn Pre-College Program?

Academic Content

The Penn Pre-College Program allows students to earn up to 8 college credit hours. Students can take this 6-week program online or choose to experience real Ivy League college life on-campus in one or two rigorous, college-level courses taken alongside Penn undergraduates. Students can expect to diligently complete homework, research papers, midterms, and/or finals at the college level. On-campus course offerings include Roman Art, Biology, World Film, Microeconomics, Science, Technology & War, Linguistics, Calculus, Experimental Psychology, and more. Online course offerings include Law & Society, Ancient Rome, Globalization, World Literature, Macroeconomics, Oceanography, Calculus, Ideas in Mathematics, International Relations, Philosophy, Politics & Economics, and more. Read course descriptions .

July 2 – August 10, 2024 (six weeks)

Applications due January 31, 2024

10 th -11 th grade students. International students are welcome but must enroll in a minimum of 1.5 credit units. Early application is strongly advised because space is not guaranteed in your course of choice, as spots do fill up.

1 unit is equivalent to 4 college credit hours.

Same as Penn Summer Academies. See above.

5. What is Penn Summer Prep Program?

Penn Summer Prep Program covers a wide range of topics in sciences, arts, and humanities. This two-week residential program is non-college credit, but a Penn-unique opportunity for high school students to experience an interdisciplinary curriculum, not falling behind on other subjects while focusing on one. Penn Summer Prep instructors are a combination of University of Pennsylvania graduate students, faculty, and staff.

Students enroll in two undergraduate-level modules (one morning and one afternoon). Modules include computer science, philosophy, society, the arts, science, and English & writing classes. To list just a couple of course offerings: Digital Media, Inequality and Cyber-Civil Rights, Pathogens, Pathology and the Next Pandemic, US Census, Data, and Democracy: Understanding Numbers with Social Sciences, and many more .

Work assigned outside of class includes readings and group activities. Student performance in the modules is not graded, but students should expect to spend about 3-5 hours a week on homework.

Students leave Penn Summer Prep with a Certificate of Completion and the opportunity to request letters of recommendation from Penn faculty.

July 6 – July 20, 2024 (two weeks)

9 th -11 th grade students. International students are welcome.

6. What is Engineering Summer Academy at Penn?

Penn Engineering Summer Academy students can earn college credit and take classes from a variety of engineering disciplines. The 3-week program is residential, and offerings include Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology, Computer Graphics, Computer Science, Nanotechnology, Networks, and Robotics.

July 6 – July 26, 2025

Application open January 2, 2025

Application due March 1, 2025

10 th -11 th grade students with a minimum 3.0 GPA. Preference for students at the honors and advanced math and science subject level. International students welcome.

The application requires a $85 application fee, high school transcript, one letter of recommendation, and a 500-word essay on an impactful personal experience that fueled your interest in engineering or what skills or talents you want to learn through the program.

7. What is Penn Wharton’s Leadership in the Business World?

Taught by Wharton faculty and guest speakers, Penn Wharton’s Leadership in the Business World summer program mirrors Wharton undergraduate curriculum, discusses core business subjects and theories of leadership and teamwork, and allows students to apply real-world business practices in digital simulations and case competitions. Students conduct research on business enterprises and speak with leaders from finance, entrepreneurship, entertainment, real estate, retail, and more industries.

Priority Applications due January 31, 2024

General Applications due April 3, 2024

Session 1: June 9 – June 29, 2024

Session 2: June 30 – July 20, 2024

Session 3: July 21 – August 10, 2024

11 th grade students with a minimum unweighted 3.5 GPA and demonstrated leadership experience. International students welcome.

The application requires a $100 application fee, high school transcript, one letter of recommendation, a short answer self-introduction, 300-word essay, on ethics in business leadership, and a video on how you’re a leader.

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8. What is Penn Carey Law Pre-College Academy?

Penn Carey Law Pre-College Academy gives high school students a first-hand law school experience. Students are introduced to the American legal system and learn the nuts and bolts of how law is practiced in the U.S. Topics in the Penn Carey Law program cover corporate law, business & entrepreneurship law, environmental law, administrative law, human rights & immigration law, and technology, privacy, & intellectual property law. The program also takes students to meet legal practitioners and visit courtrooms.

July 5 – July 26, 2025 (three weeks)

9 th -12 th grade students. International students welcome.

Residential $9,499, Commuter $5,999

The application requires a high school transcript, letter of recommendation, and short answer questions.

9. What is Penn Management & Technology Summer Institute (M&TSI)?

At Penn M&TSI , students can earn college credit while learning how to connect technology and management concepts. Taught by Wharton and Penn Engineering faculty, M&TSI introduces students to crucial knowledge and skills necessary for both fields. Students build and present a prototype and go-to-market plan for their own high-tech venture. M&TSI also offers simulations led by industry innovators such as Google.

10 th – 11 th grade students

The application requires a $100 application fee, two letters of recommendation, a 500-word essay on a personal creative business problem-solving experience, and a video self-introduction and reasons for your interest in M&TSI.

10. Prepare for University of Pennsylvania with Aralia Education

Aralia Education is an online learning platform designed for motivated middle and high school students worldwide. We provide small group and personalized one-on-one classes led by experienced high school teachers and university professors from top-ranking American institutions. Our teachers support students in exploring interests beyond their school curriculum. Prepare for Penn Summer Programs with an online course with Aralia Education!

Business Research

Writing Competition – Summer

Aralia Economics Research Scholar Program

• Extracurricular Activities

Aralia Education is an innovative online education platform for ambitious middle and high school students worldwide. Aralia’s instructors propel students forward by helping them build a strong foundation in traditional academic courses. They also actively engage and guide students in exploring personal interests beyond their school curriculum. With this holistic approach, Aralia ensures its students are well-prepared for college and equipped for success in their future careers.

• College Accelerator Program
• Comprehensive Introduction to High School
• Academic Empowerment Program
• Test Preparation Bootcamp
• Private Lessons
• Student Awards
• Competitions

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Chicago public high school students get hands-on college research experience, and a support system, through summer STEM internship

Before she started her summer internship on the University of Chicago’s campus, Alexandra Raez knew she wanted to be an engineer but navigating the wide array of established and emerging engineering pathways, particularly as a low-income, first-generation student, felt daunting. The six-week After School Matters STEM Lab summer research program for Chicago public high school students, led by the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering in partnership with After School Matters, paired Raez with rising fourth year PhD student Andrea Diaz as her mentor and offered hands-on research experience and college and career readiness support. By the time the internship was winding down, Raez was in the lab helping Diaz upcycle engineered plastic into membranes for redox flow batteries that could potentially support future power grids—and feeling empowered and supported herself.

“I don’t feel as scared [of going to college] anymore, as if everyone is going to be better than me. I feel like I genuinely can contribute to something really big, and I think I am capable of doing stuff that the people I look up to do,” Raez said. “Andrea has taught me not only about science but also about how to be more confident in myself and how to speak up and I think that’s been really great coming from another woman who’s in the field, so it’s been really inspiring to be working alongside her.”

Raez, who lives in the Gage Park neighborhood and attends Walter Payton College Prep, is one of 10 Chicago public high school students who took part in the STEM Lab this summer, working with 11 UChicago mentors across nine campus labs. The internship is designed to have high schoolers be part of authentic research projects and environments, and get insights into how science and engineering researchers work in an innovative, collaborative environment, as well as valuable experience for competitive college applications.

“It is an opportunity to step into the day-to-day life of a STEM researcher, to carry out a research project with the support of dedicated research mentors, a chance to develop professional skills like science communication and networking, and an opportunity to immerse high schoolers in authentic research spaces at UChicago,” Laura Rico-Beck, Assistant Dean of Education and Outreach at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, says.

For Raez, who had never been on a college campus prior to her internship, the program exposed her to areas of research and engineering careers she hadn’t previously considered while also connecting her to a new network of academic and professional contacts, especially the powerful advocate she found in Diaz. Diaz, too, found the experience not only personally meaningful, but professionally beneficial.

“Alexandra is very inquisitive, so it’s been perfect timing. Having an extra set of eyes and ears seeing everything I do has allowed me to see my research from a different lens,” Diaz said. “It allows me to format my thoughts a lot better and think about the way I want to talk about my research, it’s been great in that sense in that it not only helps her have an opportunity but also really helps me develop as a researcher.”

Diaz, who grew up in an under-resourced community just outside Chicago, also says she sees a lot of her younger self in Raez and hopes working with her can be as valuable for Raez as working with her own women mentors was for her. Diaz says she’s already connected Raez to colleagues and others in the field, including a professor friend at an East Coast university Raez mentioned being interested in possibly applying to. That professor, in turn, connected Raez to two Latina undergraduate students who were happy to share their own experiences.

That feeling of community and budding support system, Raez says, really set the STEM Lab experience apart and gave her resources she can continue to tap as she starts applying to colleges in the fall and in the years that follow.

“Coming here to the lab, I thought I was going to be an outsider, everyone was going to be like, ‘Oh my god, the high school student’s going to be asking questions all day and bothering us!’ But everyone is so welcoming, and they really treated me as if I was part of their team and their lab,” she said. “And they didn’t underestimate how much I knew, they just cared about how much I wanted to learn, so I truly felt like I was part of the University here and it felt awesome to be part of such a great community and have so many talented people working all around me.”

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Accelerating “Americanization”: A Study of Immigration Assimilation

Executive Summary

Assimilation is essential for immigrants to succeed in the United States. And, at a time when the U.S. population is growing only because of foreign-born migration, it is more important than ever for native-born Americans and policymakers to be concerned about the success of immigrant (both authorized and unauthorized) populations in the United States.

This report documents how immigrants are faring relative to native-born Americans in several areas—including educational attainment, wage growth, occupational prestige, and marriage and family formation—and how states are competing for immigrants within the country. The findings suggest that there is space for both federal and state governments to “upskill” the existing immigrant population—making them more educated, competent in the English language, and economically productive—as well as future cohorts of immigrants who arrive in the United States.

I conclude the report with small changes that Congress can implement to make the U.S. immigration system favor more highly educated, entrepreneurial, and English-proficient immigrants, such as imposing minimum educational and language-proficiency levels on new immigrants in the family-based categories. Because immigrants constitute a significant portion of interstate migration, I also touch on how states might attract and retain more highly educated foreign-born residents, despite competition from other U.S. states, such as expanding access to English-language training and improving education.

Key findings on economic conditions:

• College-educated immigrants are economically better off than similar college-educated natives; the opposite is true among non-college-educated immigrant and native workers.
• Income inequality in the U.S. has grown in the last half-century, but to a much greater extent between immigrants than natives.

Key findings on English competency:

• The immigrant population of the U.S. has the greatest English proficiency since the U.S. Census Bureau began measuring the skill in 1980. Today, 57% of immigrants to the U.S. speak only English or English “very well.”
• Immigrants who have arrived since 2010, particularly those younger than 45, know more English and are better educated than any previous immigrant wave.

Key findings on education:

• Immigrants to the U.S. are the most educated they have ever been, and the share of immigrants with a college degree has matched that of natives since the 1960s.
• However, the share of immigrants who did not complete high school has fallen at a slower pace than among natives, suggesting that states can help this undereducated population of roughly 20% of immigrants gain more skills.

Key findings on family formation:

• While marriage rates have fallen steadily in the U.S., marriage rates among immigrants have done so to a much lesser extent.
• Lower birthrates are causing the family size among natives to fall. By contrast, family size of immigrants grew from the 1960s through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Only recently has the average immigrant family size begun to fall.

Introduction

When new immigrants arrive in the U.S., to what extent should Americans citizens expect them to assimilate to American culture, habits, and ways of living?

Properly understood, assimilation benefits both natives and newcomers. By taking in or being absorbed into the cultural tradition of the native population, newcomers are better able to communicate and integrate into society and workplaces, as well as make better use of public services. For example, learning the language of a host community enables immigrants to form personal and professional relationships that will help them and their families live happier and more prosperous lives. Natives benefit from these new friendships and associations, too. They may be more open and helpful to immigrants who show an interest in assimilation, and everyone in the country may be better off with the increased economic activity and positive social and civic relationships.

In part, immigration is a hotly contested political issue because Americans now disagree over whether immigrants should assimilate—and what that process even means.

Some progressives consider any expectation that newcomers assimilate as anti-immigrant and provincial. By contrast, some conservatives view too much difference as a source of disunity. They view assimilation as a prerequisite to new immigration and a goal of public policy.

This divergence is important because how Americans think about immigration and assimilation matters significantly for public policy. In late 2020, a Pew Research Center poll[ 1 ] found that while 89% of Republicans and Republican-leaners thought that it was “very” or “somewhat” important to speak English to be “truly American,” only 65% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners did. Sharing American customs and traditions was important for 86% of Republicans, versus 59% of Democrats. Even though Pew found that large majorities of Americans want immigrants to assimilate through adopting the English language and American customs, this growing partisan divide of now 20+ points could signal problems for the future.

A summer 2023 poll from the Manhattan Institute can shed additional light on how Republican primary voters view assimilation.[ 2 ] When MI asked GOP primary voters in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire what factor should be the most important in determining whether someone should be allowed to immigrate to the U.S., eagerness to integrate into American society was second only to immigrants not relying on public welfare. These voters wanted to make immigration easier for two groups: professionals with advanced degrees in STEM areas; and immediate relatives of U.S. citizens—the two groups most likely not to rely on public welfare and to have an easier time assimilating.

Regardless of partisan disagreement, we should understand how current immigrants are assimilating in order to design immigration policies that maximize the assimilation of future immigrants and to improve the prospects of immigrants already in the United States.

This report analyzes several culturally and financially significant characteristics of immigrants—proxies for assimilation—and how the immigrants with such characteristics have changed over time at the national and state levels.

One key measure analyzed in this report is how much English immigrants speak and how quickly they learn the language. Another measure is their education level and how it changes over time and how it changes relative to that of natives. These two measures are tightly bound to another characteristic: the income that immigrants earn relative to natives. In addition, the report analyzes other, less discussed, measures of assimilation, such as marriage and family size.

Many of these measures will not reflect whether immigrants become more similar to natives over time, but rather how the type of new immigrant coming to the U.S. is changing and how foreign-born individuals move between states. States may desire to “upgrade” their immigrant populations by lowering barriers to education, jobs, and English learning. Alternatively, states may want to attract more highly skilled immigrants, add barriers for low-skilled migrants, and compete only for immigrants who will be net-taxpayers. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of immigrant populations by state, over time, is useful for investigating interstate migration.

Immigrant Population Size in the United States

As of 2020, the immigrant share of the U.S. population was approximately 13.8%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau ( Figure 1 ).[ 3 ] This is the highest immigrant share since the early twentieth century; previous historical peaks were in 1890 and 1910, when the foreign-born share of the population reached 14.7%.

The overall immigrant share fell after 1910 because of several factors. World War I made transatlantic travel more difficult and greatly reduced immigration from Europe;[ 4 ] Congress introduced ethnic immigration quotas in the 1920s;[ 5 ] and the Great Depression reduced job opportunities for foreigners and natives alike. In 1970, the foreign-born share of the population fell to an all-time low of 4.7%.[ 6 ] The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the ethnic quota system and increased total limits on immigration (but left in place country-of-birth quotas), and the Immigration Act of 1990 further expanded legal immigration.[ 7 ] Since then, there has also been a rapid increase in the number of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S., bringing the share of residents who are foreign-born to what it is today.[ 8 ]

But the increase in the immigrant share was not evenly distributed across the contiguous United States ( Figures 2 and 3 ).[ 9 ] In some states, the share even declined; at the same time, it more than doubled at the national level.

In the last half-century, the nation’s share of the population that is foreign-born increased by about 9 percentage points (from 4.7% in 1970 to 13.8% in 2020). Just seven states experienced a higher growth than the nation overall: California, Nevada, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia ( Figure 4 ). Five states even have lower foreign-born shares today than in 1970: Maine, North Dakota, Vermont, Montana, and Wyoming.

English Proficiency

The current immigrant population in the U.S. is the most proficient in English since 1980, when the census bureau began documenting this measure. Today, nearly 57% of immigrants speak only English or English “very well,” up from less than 50% in 2000 and 2011, and from less than 55% in 1980 ( Figure 5 ). The recent increase in English proficiency is not due to previous waves of immigrants learning more English once they arrive in the U.S.; it is mainly driven by new, younger immigrants who are already proficient in the English language by the time they arrive.

When we break down English proficiency among immigrants whose native language is not English by decade of immigration and age at migration, we can observe a pattern: younger immigrants know more English when they arrive in the U.S. than older immigrants, and they also learn English faster. Younger people generally have an easier time learning a new language; what is surprising is that the young immigrants who began arriving to the U.S. in the 2010s are the most English-proficient immigrant generation ever to be measured ( Figure 6 ).

Nearly 50% of nonnative English-speaking young adult immigrants who arrived in the 2010s reported speaking English “very well,” compared with 30%–35% of previous generations who immigrated at the same age since the 1970s. This young adult cohort includes only immigrants who came to the U.S. after they turned 18 and were 25–34 years of age by the census year after their arrival.

English proficiency also increased among 35–44-year-old new immigrants from about 30% in previous decades to nearly 45% in the 2010s. New immigrants 45 and older didn’t see much change in their English proficiency relative to past immigrant waves of the same age.

To emphasize this drastic change in the language skills of immigrants over time, consider that new immigrants between 25 and 34 are arriving to the U.S. with greater English proficiency than those who arrived at the same age and have spent three decades living here and learning the language ( Figure 7 ).

Figure 7 displays how an immigrant cohort’s English proficiency changed over time, as recorded by the decennial census. For immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s, their first year tracked by the census is 1980; their second census year is 1990; and so on. Immigrants who arrived in the 2010s have been measured in only one census year: 2020.

The age groups are defined as immigrants who arrived in the selected decade over 18 years old and between the ages of 25 and 34 by the time of their first decennial census. For example, those in the 1970s cohort all immigrated between 1970 and 1979, were at least 18 years old in their year of entry into the U.S., and were 25–34 years old by the 1980 census. Therefore, the youngest migrant in this cohort would have immigrated at 18 in 1973 and be 25 by the 1980 census; the oldest would be a 33-year-old person who immigrated in 1979 and turned 34 before the 1980 census.

Readers might assume that this trend of greater English proficiency among arrivals might be driven by a greater share of immigrants from India, a populous nation where the native language is not English but English is nonetheless widely taught. But no: English proficiency of young immigrants increased among all regions of origin since 2010, and the greatest increase wasn’t among Asians but among Europeans ( Figure 8 ). Sixty-seven percent of young European immigrants speak English very well, excluding those whose native language is already English. About 65% of Asian immigrants and 25% of Latin American immigrants also spoke English very well.

When measuring the change in English proficiency by world region of origin, young Europeans today are nearly 30 points more likely to speak English very well than those who migrated in the 1970s; young Asians are 18 points more English-proficient than their 1970s predecessors; and Latin Americans are nearly 10 percentage points more proficient. But changes in immigrants’ world region of origin did not cause a rise in English proficiency; they slowed it down. Average English proficiency among new young immigrants finally increased in the 2010s, after Latin Americans increased their English proficiency.

Interestingly, since the 1970s, new immigrants from Europe and Latin America increased their English proficiency among every age group, while Asians did so only among those under 45 ( Figure 9 ).

Keep in mind that these data include unauthorized immigrants, who are overwhelmingly from Latin America. This is likely the reason that Latin American immigrants, on average, show lower English proficiency. However, there is evidence of increasing English proficiency even among unauthorized immigrants.[ 10 ]

Moreover, new young immigrants going to every census region of the U.S. are more likely to speak English “very well,” so the rise in proficiency is not driven by a change in the intended or actual destination of immigrants ( Figure 10 ). For the first time, most new young immigrants to the Midwest and the West of the U.S. speak English very well. And the former trend of reduced English proficiency for immigrants going to the South completely reversed in the 2010s.

Young immigrants also began to learn English more quickly in the 2010s, including those who arrived in the U.S. a decade prior ( Figure 11 ). This fact, alongside increased English proficiency being concentrated among young people from every region of origin, suggests that increased English proficiency is caused by a combination of domestic and foreign factors in American society after 2010. Especially after the fallout of the 2008 Great Recession, there was reduced demand for low-skilled labor while demand for high-skilled labor continued to grow,[ 11 ] attracting immigrants who were more likely to speak English and have higher educational attainment. Additionally, the teaching of English expanded all over the world, increasing the pool of prospective English-proficient immigrants.[ 12 ]

Educational Attainment

English proficiency isn’t the only measure by which new immigrants are assimilating. Immigrants today are also the most highly educated they have ever been. The share of immigrants and native-born Americans who are in their prime-age working years and have at least an undergraduate degree has been roughly equal every year since 1960 ( Figure 12, Panel A ). While about 9% of natives in this age group had college degrees in 1960, 38% do now. For immigrants, 9% of them had college degrees in 1960, and nearly 40% of them do now.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines prime working-age years as 25–54. This restriction is important because it excludes people too young to have a college degree and those who are old enough to retire early.

Although there is no gap in college attainment between the average immigrant and native, there is a growing gap at both the top and bottom ends of the educational achievement scale ( Figure 12, Panels B and C ). The share of prime-age natives who earned a graduate degree grew from 3.5% in 1960 to 14% in 2021, while the same share of immigrants grew from 5% to 18%. On the low end of the educational range, the gap between natives and immigrants favors the former. In 1960, 59% of prime-age immigrants did not complete high school, versus 50% of natives; now those shares have dropped to 18% and 5%, respectively. Therefore, the gap between the two groups is growing, even as immigrants are obtaining more education. The higher share of immigrants among those with lower levels of education is driven by unauthorized immigrants, beginning in the 1980s, who did not complete high school in their countries of origin.

These facts on the education of immigrants may paint a picture of a seamless assimilation into American society that has not changed over time. But they hide what is happening with newer immigrant cohorts.

What is driving increasing educational attainment among immigrants is a combination of greater educational gains of past immigrants already living in the U.S. and more highly educated new waves of immigrants ( Figure 13 ). As with English proficiency, new young immigrants are the most highly educated immigrant cohort in U.S. history. But unlike English-proficiency gains, educational gains are not concentrated among new young immigrants. Older immigrants are also coming to the U.S. with more years of schooling and more college degrees. These gains are not exclusively post-2010; they have been gradual since the 1970s.

The rise in immigrants’ educational achievement may be due to several factors, including a U.S. economy that increased the returns of going to college;[ 13 ] and foreign countries have educated their populations more over time.[ 14 ] As discussed below, immigrants with college degrees not only earn more because they have degrees; their earnings gap with college-educated natives is smaller and even reverses within a few years of arrival.

Wage Assimilation and Rising Immigrant Inequality

Education and English proficiency are important insofar as they help immigrants succeed economically and socially in America. Indeed, rising education has contributed to a closing of the wage gap between immigrants and natives.

Among natives and immigrants who are in their prime years, 25–54, and who are employed full-time, the wage gap between the median working immigrant and native grew from 1960 until about 2010 and has since begun to close.

But it is not sufficient to observe only the median immigrant and native worker because there are important assimilation differences across the income distribution. The wage gap between an immigrant worker at the 75th percentile of the income distribution of immigrants and a native worker at the 75th percentile of income among natives is much smaller than at the 50th and 25th percentiles. This means that higher-income immigrants and natives have more similar wages than lower-income groups. This did not use to be the case. In the 1960s, immigrants and natives at the three wage percentiles had only minor wage differences, reflecting growing inequality among lower-income immigrants relative to natives ( Figure 14 ). On the other hand, highly skilled immigrants earn more than comparably skilled natives. In fact, immigrants at the 75th percentile of the income distribution and above now earn more than natives in a similar position.

Figure 15 takes another look at the difference between high-earning and low-earning immigrants through earnings ratios. Earnings ratios show how much more workers at the high end of the pay scale earn, compared with those at the lower end. The larger the ratio, the greater the difference in pay between groups. In 1960, the ratio of the 75th percentile to the 25th percentile for both immigrants and natives was about 2.4, meaning that those in the 75th percentile of the earnings distribution made 2.4 times as much as those in the 25th percentile. But by 2021, immigrants had a 75th–25th ratio of nearly 3.3 and natives had a 75th–25th ratio of only 2.6, showing much greater growth of inequality among immigrants than natives.

When we break down the immigrant–native wage gap by education level, we find that immigrant wage assimilation (nearing or surpassing native wages, by education level) is occurring only for college-educated immigrants ( Figure 16 ).

However, the wage gap between college-educated immigrants and natives has not only closed; it has reversed. The median college-educated immigrant today earns nearly 15% more than the median college-educated native, and even more at the 75th percentile of income of each group.

Non-college-educated immigrants, by contrast, earn less than similarly educated natives at all points of the income distribution, and that gap grows wider each year ( Figure 17 ).

Therefore, we can suspect that the overall native–immigrant wage gap has reversed because college-educated immigrants are doing so much better than those who did not complete a degree. But this inequality could also reflect sorting by English ability, such that college-educated immigrants are simply more likely to speak English, and a greater share of immigrants without college degrees are those who never learned to speak English. This drives down average earnings for this group because of a composition change, meaning that group averages can mislead about how subgroups are doing ( Figure 18 ).

The wage gap for immigrants who speak English very well but didn’t go to college did not change much during 1980–2011, while the gap including those who do speak English grew by about 10 points in the same period.

If non-college-educated immigrants earning less than similar natives is a compositional effect that is due to increased sorting by English proficiency, what is causing the reversion of the immigrant–native wage gap among the college-educated?

If merely rising English proficiency among college-educated immigrants were behind their rising earnings, then restricting the sample to those who know English should show a constant wage gap over time. For instance, this could happen if foreign professionals begin learning more English and can finally work in their fields, thus raising their incomes. But immigrant relative earnings have risen at all levels of income gradually since 1990 ( Figure 19 ). Therefore, rising English proficiency is not behind their rising incomes for this group.

Clearly, rising initial relative wages are concentrated among new immigrants who arrived after 2010 ( Figure 20 ). Initial relative wages are the first salaries that immigrants earn when they arrive in the U.S.; these tend to be lower than those of comparably skilled natives because employers tend to discount foreign job experience and educational credentials, relative to domestic experience and credentials.

After initial earnings stayed constant for over four decades, new young immigrants are now seeing higher initial earnings than similar-aged native workers—about 10% higher. Other young immigrant cohorts are also experiencing faster wage growth, relative to natives. Immigrant cohorts over 45 did not experience this increase in relative earnings post-2010, suggesting that this is driven by higher education and English proficiency among young cohorts.

If the sample is restricted to college-educated immigrants and natives, the wage gap did not change as much as the whole sample implies ( Figure 22 ). Newer college-educated immigrant cohorts are earning more than natives, but the change is not as drastic. Additionally, rising initial earnings for immigrants in the 2010s are accompanied by rising relative earnings of all immigrant cohorts with college degrees in the 2010s.

Among those without a college degree, newer young immigrants are also closing the gap ( Figure 23 ). Therefore, the average wage gap is not closing simply because newer immigrants are more educated; it is closing because all new immigrants are earning more than similar native workers. Education and English proficiency have likely contributed most to closing, and even reversing, the immigrant–native wage gap, but other choices, such as choice in occupation, seem to drive higher relative wages of immigrants beginning in the 2010s.

To show that occupational choices are behind greater immigrant earnings, I show the occupational “prestige” score of new young immigrants, aged 25–34, the census year after their arrival in the United States. After relative stability from the 1970s to the 2000s (and even a small decline), new young immigrants are entering occupations with much greater social prestige than those of past immigrants.

Occupational prestige, in this case, is a measure from the American Community Survey, based on 1960s surveys about the social standing, respectability, and status of various occupations. It is not a perfect measure, but it is useful in understanding whether immigrants are advancing on the social ladder, and not just monetarily.

As my MI colleague Robert VerBruggen showed[ 15 ] earlier this year, the success of college-educated and English-speaking immigrants should guide how the U.S. selects legal immigrants, in order to maximize immigrant success. This reports adds not merely that immigrants with higher education and better English ability do better than those without those attributes; on average, they are outearning natives of similar educational levels to a greater degree every year, driven by more positive immigrant selection among new young cohorts.

Marriage and Fertility

Though converging wages and similar education between natives and newcomers, as well as rising English proficiency, may suggest a success in immigrant assimilation, there are two ways in which immigrants in the U.S. are beginning to differ from natives that are a reason for celebration.

While marriage and fertility rates have fallen for natives in the U.S. since the 1960s, immigrant marriages and fertility have fallen at a much slower rate. Today, immigrants aged 25–54 are more than 14 percentage points more likely to be married than native-born Americans, and that difference has widened each decade since 1960 ( Figure 25 ).

The average family size—i.e., the self-reported number of blood-related family members in the household—increased for immigrants from the 1960s until the beginning of the twenty-first century because of the rising share of immigrants who were Hispanic, reflecting both greater fertility and cohabitation with grandparents in the same household ( Figure 26 ).

Marriage and family structure are important considerations for policymakers because of the implications for social assimilation and economic success. Immigrants marry at higher rates and have larger families not likely as the result of a prosperous U.S. economy but, rather, selection. Marriage rates and family sizes are higher in the countries of origin of the foreign-born population in the U.S.; so those who immigrate are often already married and growing a family or have the expectation of doing so. Another reason for the higher immigrant marriage rate may be that one way newcomers can come or stay legally in the U.S. is by marrying a U.S. citizen or permanent resident; therefore, increased marriage may reflect a selection effect by this legal channel.

Interstate Migration and the California Paradox

The foreign-born population is affected by in- and out-migration and deaths, since the children of immigrants are, by definition, native-born. But a topic in immigrant assimilation that needs more study is where immigrants move after they first arrive in the United States.

Most interstate migration research focuses on total interstate migration[ 16 ] or prime-age migration. More recently, there have been analyses about where parents of young children,[ 17 ] even broken down by race, are migrating. But much of “domestic” migration is made up of foreign-born residents. Over 11% of all interstate moves in 2020–21 were by foreign-born residents, even excluding the new immigrants who arrived in those two years.[ 18 ] Immigrants generally do not stay forever in the place where they first arrive in the United States.[ 19 ] Understanding where immigrants go after they arrive in the U.S. may be the key to understanding why some are assimilating faster and for state policymakers.

One way to find out where successful immigrants go is to compare where they move relative to natives, especially those in their prime working years.

During 2011–21, the native noninstitutionalized (i.e., not imprisoned or in nursing-home facilities), prime-age population fell in 30 out of 50 states because of a combination of natural aging and low fertility as well as interstate migration ( Figure 27 ).

Despite a growing immigrant population nationally, 10 states also lost immigrant prime-age residents, even after accounting for new immigrants arriving from abroad. Chief among the losers of prime-age immigrants were California, New York, and Illinois, with large losses also in New Mexico and South Dakota ( Figure 28 ). These five states lost 6%–11% of their prime-age immigrant populations during 2011–21.

People of prime working age are in the period of life in which they are most likely to work, earn the most in income, and constitute most of the taxpaying population. To measure why some states experienced a decrease in the prime-age immigrant population despite an influx from other countries, I add up the total in-state and out-of-state migration of foreign-born prime-age residents of each state during 2011–21, using census data. To be counted, an immigrant must have immigrated at least the year prior to the survey, so that those who simply moved as soon as they arrived in the U.S. are not counted. By adding up all the inbound and outbound moves between states for a decade, we can observe trends rather than one-year effects.

In absolute terms, the state that lost the most immigrants to other states in the last 10 years is New York, which lost almost 310,000 prime-age immigrant residents to other states ( Figure 29 ). California lost a net 135,000 prime-age immigrants to other states, and Illinois lost almost 65,000. Incredibly, 23 states had a net loss of prime-age immigrants to other states. These domestic migration figures exclude immigrants who arrive directly from abroad and stay in the state where they arrive, but at least for New York, California, and Illinois, foreign migration has not been enough to offset out-of-state migration.

While New York, California, and Illinois lost prime-age immigrants both in absolute numbers and in net interstate migration, Texas, Colorado, Washington, and Florida gained the most ( Figure 30 ). Texas gained more than 200,000 net immigrant prime-age residents from other states during 2011–21.

After adjusting for population, the picture is not too different. New York still leads, with a loss of nearly 78 prime-age immigrants per 100,000 total residents in a span of 10 years ( Figure 31 ). Colorado, Nevada, and Washington are states that attracted the most prime-age immigrants from other states relative to their population size, and Arkansas is in fifth place for growth, right behind Texas.

But looking simply at the rate of domestic net migration of immigrants hides important differences in the behavior of college-educated and non-college-educated immigrants.

The states that gained or lost immigrants also tended to gain or lose college-educated immigrants. For instance, New York lost nearly 150,000 college-educated prime-age immigrants to other states over 10 years, about half of all the immigrants the state lost. Texas gained more than 108,000 prime-age college-educated immigrants and more than 96,0000 non-college-educated immigrants from other states. But there was one major exception to this pattern; even though California lost a net 135,000 prime-age immigrants to other states, the state gained more than 80,000 college-educated, prime-age immigrants over the same 10 years. This implies that California’s immigrant losses are exclusively of immigrants who did not complete college.

California is one of only six states that lost non-college-educated prime-age immigrants while gaining college-educated ones, alongside Arizona, Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, and Maine ( Figure 32 ). California’s paradox is likely driven by the fact that the cost of living is ballooning in the state, at the same time as opportunities for highly educated workers abound. This environment is leading to a sort of immigrant “gentrification” such that immigrants with lower earnings and education are pushed out, while Silicon Valley and Golden State universities keep attracting college-educated immigrants from other states with high enough salaries.

The policies that often attract native-born Americans to a state, such as lower taxes and a better business environment,[ 20 ] also attract immigrants. But these policies may not attract highly skilled immigrants exclusively. These pro-economic-growth policies may also attract immigrants with little education, who might have a greater reliance on public welfare programs. The “California paradox” is a paradox because certain policies that increase the cost of living and make life worse for residents—including American citizens—also mean fewer poorly educated immigrants, yet not necessarily fewer immigrants with higher education.

On the other hand, midwestern and Great Plains states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and the Dakotas have attracted non-college-educated immigrants while they hemorrhage college-educated ones.

Recommendations

Select better immigrants.

We should celebrate that recent immigrant cohorts are the most highly educated, the most proficient in English, and the highest paid in U.S. history. But we can do better. Congress can make small tweaks to immigration law to favor more highly educated, entrepreneurial, and English-proficient immigrants.

These changes include:

• Accelerate the visa applications of immigrants who pay an additional fee by expanding premium processing for all immigration forms, as I described in a recent report on reducing immigration backlogs.[ 21 ] This expedition would make the legal process quicker for all applicants at no cost to taxpayers, with the indirect benefit of allowing wealthier immigrants to have their cases decided more quickly. Given the limited number of immigrant visas and the first-come, first-served system to allocate them, a fee-based expedition process would also guarantee a spot ahead of others.
• Exempt highly paid immigrants from the Department of Labor’s burdensome PERM process to obtain employment-based visas, as I proposed in a previous Manhattan Institute report.[ 22 ] This would create a faster lane for highly paid employment-based immigrants, prioritizing the more highly compensated immigrants in the competition for a very limited number of employer-sponsored immigrant visas.
• Congress should create a pilot program that awards immigrant visas based on points to immigrants for their English ability, education, age, and earnings.
• Congress could effectively “upskill” the existing immigrant flow by imposing a minimum English-proficiency requirement on family-based immigrants. Specifically, Congress could require a minimum Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score, just as U.S. colleges require for international students.
• Congress should impose a minimum educational requirement on all immigrant visas for adults, such as high school graduation. This requirement is already in place for winners of the diversity visa lottery[ 23 ] and would encourage prospective immigrants to learn English and acquire skills and education as they wait in line for family visas abroad. Those who do come to the U.S. would be preparing themselves—and the American communities they join—for success.

Lift Up Existing Immigrants

Selecting new immigrants who have the potential for greater assimilation is not policymakers’ only tool with which to improve immigrant outcomes. The biggest potential gains are found in helping immigrants already in the United States. Americans of all political persuasions should support helping the existing immigrant population gain more useful skills, including English-language comprehension. Otherwise, immigrants may be permanently stuck in a sort of underclass. Conservatives should enthusiastically endorse the idea of helping immigrants assimilate, which may encourage immigrants to be proud to be in the U.S. and grateful for the opportunities that the nation gives them. This help will likely make immigrants less dependent on public services. Progressives should be eager to reduce inequalities between immigrants and natives by breaking down the barriers that immigrants face because of lower education and lower English competency.

The U.S. has always excelled at assimilating immigrants intergenerationally.[ 24 ] However, the U.S. does not excel at assimilating low-education, non-English-speaking adults—but only their children and grandchildren raised and educated in the United States. We can do more for these adult immigrants and, in turn, create far more opportunities for their children. One way to do this is English as a Second Language training for adults.

There is compelling evidence that government-funded language-training programs for adult immigrants are effective and even pay for themselves. In Massachusetts, one study found that English-language training for adult immigrants increased their annual earnings by over $2,300 annually and over $55,000 in take-home pay over the working life of an average participant. The authors of this study estimate that immigrants who participate in the program end up paying more in taxes, such that they pay back the cost of their training within 20 years.[ 25 ] Furthermore, free English training increased voter registration, showing that this measure leads not only to economic assimilation but also to civic assimilation.

The Massachusetts study is possibly the best evidence available because admission to the program was through a random lottery, enabling researchers to conduct a randomized control trial. The two groups’ outcomes were examined for over a decade.

Language training has also worked abroad, specifically in Denmark, where Danish courses for refugees increased their employment rates, reduced the likelihood that they would commit crimes, and induced them to invest more in their own education.[ 26 ] Another study of refugee language training in Denmark found that the children of the refugees also benefited, ultimately completing high school at higher rates. Boys of these refugees were also less likely to commit crimes.[ 27 ]

Another politically controversial element to assimilation is the subject of unauthorized immigration. A large portion of the non-English-proficient immigrant population are illegally present in the U.S. either because they crossed the border without authorization or overstayed a visa. The majority of this population will likely never be deported and, on average, they have been in the country for over a decade.[ 28 ] There are real economic gains for native-born Americans from helping this population learn English, earn more income, and thus pay more in taxes. Not only will this benefit the native-born American adults but also the American children raised by unauthorized immigrants.

Many conservatives might balk at the idea of helping unauthorized immigrants in any way, but should support targeting language training to legal immigrants, including immigrants in refugee programs or on family-based visas who are here legally. On the other hand, policymakers in Democratic states who seek to help the unauthorized immigrant population by expanding welfare or public benefits programs should follow the example of Massachusetts and dramatically expand English language training rather than make the unauthorized population dependent on state welfare programs.

Interstate Competition

Earlier, this report cited a contradiction—the “California paradox.” A state can effectively “upskill” its foreign-born population by raising the state’s cost of living and driving poor, less educated, and non-English-speaking immigrants out of the state—while still attracting highly skilled ones. But what is the difference between California and, say, New York or Illinois (states that implemented similar policies to California’s and yet also experienced net outflows of highly skilled immigrants)? It may be that Silicon Valley, the most concentrated tech cluster in America, is a much more immigrant-heavy and immigrant-dependent job hub than the main places of industries—such as finance—in other high-cost states.[ 29 ] So the California Paradox is likely just a unique fact of California and one that may not last forever.

Nevertheless, states can implement targeted policies to retain highly educated immigrants. They can encourage immigrants to enroll in and graduate college by lowering tuition rates for foreign-born applicants who agree to stay within the state and work for a certain number of years after graduation. This could take the form of a forgivable student loan, similar to programs that encourage graduates to teach for five consecutive years in underserved primary and secondary schools within a state.[ 30 ]

Ultimately, state policymakers should expand what they consider part of their immigration policy toolkit. By considering economic policy, quality-of-life measures, and educational systems, they will change the type of immigrant that their state attracts, even if legal immigration policies remain unchanged. Changing the type of immigrant that their state attracts will affect the relative success and assimilation of immigrants already in the U.S., and maximizing immigrant success can maximize states’ success, especially as states compete for immigrants in creative ways.

Immigrants in the U.S. are, on average, the most assimilated in terms of language and educational attainment as they have been since at least the 1970s. By many measures, including English proficiency and wage growth, immigrants are assimilating faster and coming to the U.S. more “pre-assimilated” than in past decades. This means that immigrants are arriving with fewer educational and communication barriers, and the barriers that do exist are being surmounted more quickly than in the past. New immigrants are also earning higher initial wages relative to natives than past immigrant cohorts, and their earnings are growing faster. But by one important measure, that of marriage and children, immigrants are becoming more different from natives over time, as marriage rates and fertility among native-born Americans have collapsed at a much faster rate than among immigrants.

While progress in assimilation is good news, the gains are concentrated exclusively among college-educated immigrants and immigrants who speak English very well. We should be concerned about increased immigrant inequality, as a result of previous immigrant generations (especially unauthorized immigrants) having little to no education and no advancement in their English ability. Even among legal immigrants, many of those who come through family sponsorship may not have the necessary English skills to communicate effectively in the workplace. This reduces their job opportunities and fuels negative views about immigration, and it is a cost for taxpayers.

The U.S. has more immigrants within its borders than any other country in the world.[ 31 ] The immigrant population must succeed if the U.S. is to succeed as well. Bipartisan desire for immigrants to integrate into American society is in the best interests of the civic and economic future of the United States. That’s why we must select future immigrants who assimilate faster and support the immigrants who are already living in the U.S. based on the two tools we know can integrate immigrants into American society: education and English proficiency.

About the Author

Daniel Di Martino is a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University and a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he focuses on high-skill immigration policy. Born and raised in Venezuela, he came to the U.S. in 2016. He has appeared many times on national TV, including Fox News and CNN, and has written for USA Today and National Review . Di Martino speaks regularly on college campuses and at high schools. He is the founder of the Dissident Project and a board member of Young America’s Foundation.

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High School Students Are Taking College Courses: Who Assures Quality?

From Ohio’s College Credit Plus to Hawaii’s Running Start , dual enrollment (sometimes called dual credit) programs are spreading all over the nation. In these programs, eligible high school students can take certain college courses as part of their high school education. As Hawaii’s program name implies, dual enrollment is intended to give high school students a running start on gaining a college education.

Dual-enrolled students are now a significant portion of college enrollment. Fall 2022 estimates indicate as many as one in five community college students, or 1.4 million, are high school students. 1 In spring 2024, dual-enrolled high school students accounted for more than one-quarter of the undergraduate enrollment increases from the previous semester. While 70 percent of dual enrollment students are enrolled at community colleges, the remaining 30 percent attend four-year institutions . Whether earning just a few credits, completing a certificate, or pursuing an associate degree, more young Americans are opting to start their post-secondary career early. 

High school students who take dual enrollment courses are more likely to graduate high school, enroll in a post-secondary institution, and receive a post-secondary degree. Despite the growth of dual enrollment, however, gaps in access remain, with four out of every five school districts showing racial equity gaps in access to dual enrollment. Low-income students, students of color, English language learners, and students with disabilities all participate in dual enrollment at lower rates than their counterparts. For historically underrepresented students, including low-income and rural high school students, dual enrollment can help ease the transition to post-secondary education , reduce time to degree or certificate, and offer cost-savings when students can transfer the credits from courses they complete satisfactorily. 

With so many students pursuing dual enrollment, who ensures accountability for these programs? That is, who makes sure that the running start to college that these programs are intended to give students is a high-quality, effective way for them to begin higher education? And who makes sure that the students who would most benefit from dual enrollment have access to these programs? Does the fact that these programs exist at the boundary of secondary and postsecondary education impact oversight? 

This commentary will first briefly describe what dual enrollment is, then review the roles of various players in maintaining dual enrollment program quality, most particularly college accreditors. It then concludes with a series of recommendations for accreditors, states, and other stakeholders to improve quality and equity of dual enrollment programs.

What Is Dual Enrollment?

Dual enrollment most commonly refers to programs that enable high school students to be enrolled in their high school as well as a post-secondary institution at the same time. 2 The concurrent enrollment in a high school and post-secondary institution is what differentiates dual enrollment from similar programs like Advanced Placement (AP) and early college high school initiatives. 3 Additionally, while the College Board does not require Advanced Placement teachers to have special training, instructors of dual enrollment courses—regardless of where they are conducted—must meet the same expectations as instructors of similar college courses. Students have the option of attending dual enrollment courses in a variety of settings and modalities; courses may be offered on-site at a student’s high school, online (synchronous and asynchronous), hybrid, or at a post-secondary institution. Students who complete dual enrollment courses receive academic credit from the post secondary institution they are enrolled in. 4

High school students taking these advanced courses are expected—at least in theory—to adapt to the academic rigor and expectations required of other post-secondary students taking college courses.

High school students taking these advanced courses are expected—at least in theory—to adapt to the academic rigor and expectations required of other post-secondary students taking college courses. Dual enrollment students should also receive appropriate levels of academic support and access to resources from the post-secondary institution and their high schools. The expectations about academic rigor, faculty qualifications, and student support services in dual enrollment programs may be set by legislation at the state level but they are also enforced through postsecondary accrediting agency standards. 5  Institutions of higher education use the accreditation process to signal to other institutions, the government, and prospective students that all of their programs, including dual enrollment, meet appropriate levels of quality.

How College Accreditors Set Quality Standards for Dual Enrollment

Because dual enrollment students are receiving credit for their coursework, post-secondary and high school programs serving these students must be held to the same academic rigor standards as traditional college courses for matriculated students. An accrediting agency’s standards are an accountability framework for evaluation and review that all institutions’ programs must meet, including dual enrollment programs. Dual enrollment students are entitled to the same quality education as traditional students. Accreditation standards generally draw no distinctions between the two, though secondary students may also receive additional program supports from their high school. Regardless of the location or modality of the dual enrollment student, the course content must meet institutional and accreditor expectations.

Accreditation standards apply to all courses and programs of an institution, so any dual enrollment program with a higher education partner must comply with that institution’s accreditation standards. In addition, some accreditors have explicit standards that apply to dual enrollment programs. For example, in its standards on “Integrity in the Award of Academic Credit,” the New England Commission on Higher Education (NECHE) specifically states that courses and programs offered for credit off campus, including at high schools through dual enrollment, must be consistent with the educational objectives of the institution and that the post-secondary institution is solely responsible for the academic quality of all aspects of these programs. The Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) mentions dual and concurrent enrollment once in the appendix of its accreditation handbook under “Special Circumstances that Warrant Waivers of DEAC Standards & Procedures.” 6 Under “Policies Pertaining To Institutions,” the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS), an institutional accrediting agency with forty-three institutions, identifies eight dual enrollment policies pertaining to: notification, faculty, curriculum and instruction, institutional effectiveness, library and learning resources, academic and student support services, admissions and transparency, and facilities. Others make no specific reference to dual or concurrent enrollment in their procedures and accreditations standards.

Predictability and Consistency in Credit Transfer

Earning college credits while in high school does not guarantee a shorter path once in college. Decisions about whether to accept transfer credits are mostly left to the discretion of the receiving institutions. While some students will matriculate at the same two- or four-year institution they were enrolled in for dual enrollment, others will explore different colleges and programs. The college credit transfer process is rife with challenges and students may face credit loss as a result of institutional policies or see their credits, but not their grades, transfer. There isn’t a consistent policy across accreditors or across institutions on whether a specific numerical grade is required for a student to receive the credit or if simply passing the course is sufficient. 7 Likewise, how an institution will scrutinize whether another school’s course is “equivalent” to a course it offers is often left to the admissions or registrar’s office where the student is enrolling. Students enrolled in dual enrollment need to understand course and credit transfer policies between their home institution and other college programs which is crucial for ensuring students avoid taking extra/unnecessary courses. Even institutions with the same accreditor and within the same state public education system may evaluate a course differently, creating confusion and frustration for students.

Earning college credits while in high school does not guarantee a shorter path once in college.

While dual enrollment students have the opportunity to reduce their time to degree or certificate and the associated costs, they can only access this benefit if their credits transfer. To address this issue, some states have required that public colleges and universities accept dual enrollment credits, but credit loss remains an issue for many transfer students, including those who do dual enrollment. NECHE, a formerly regional accreditor with 203 institutional members, requires that each institution’s credit transfer policy be publicly disclosed on its website and in other relevant publications. The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), another former regional accreditor for postsecondary institutions in the central United States, also specifies that the institution is responsible for informing students clearly and accurately whether courses taken for dual credit will transfer to other institutions. In general, transparency is severely lacking in the credit transfer process, which is particularly unfortunate for dual enrollment community college students as complicated transfer policies make it harder for transfer students to earn a four-year degree. Even when transfer policies are posted, students may not have school or course level information on credit mobility or applicability of credit, adding further opacity to the process.

Faculty Qualifications

Another area where accrediting standards are relevant to dual enrollment is faculty or instructor qualifications. Dual enrollment courses may be taught by adjunct faculty, full-time college faculty, graduate students, or high school teachers who meet the qualifications. Most accrediting agencies have faculty qualification standards that detail what credentials or training faculty members must possess to teach a course. High school teachers that serve as instructors for dual enrollment coursework often receive instruction from both the post-secondary institution and their high school, but their school’s expectations and the tendency of high school teachers to be more lenient may contradict the expectations of the postsecondary accreditor, undermining implementation and course rigor. 

While faculty criteria and competency standards may vary by accreditor, most require an institution to justify and document the qualifications of its faculty members. In addition to the federally recognized accreditor standards for instructor qualifications, most states also specify instructor qualification requirements for at least one of their dual enrollment programs through state policy. More than half of U.S. states require that instructors meet the postsecondary institution’s specified faculty qualifications and nine states require faculty in dual or concurrent enrollment programs to hold a graduate degree. 

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) requires that the “instructor of record” in dual enrollment courses possess the same academic credentials and/or documented professional experience required by the institution of all of its faculty. Each of the 753 SACSCOC accredited institutions are responsible for documenting the qualifications of any dual enrollment instructors, whether they’re high school teachers or not, and including them on the faculty roster for review by the SACSCOC committee. Full-time faculty are also expected to teach and/or provide appropriate oversight for dual enrollment courses. While “appropriate” is not defined in the standards it seemingly refers to a level of instruction that meets standards for integrity, teaching, and learning. The SACSCOC policy echoes, as others accrediting agencies do, that content and rigor of dual enrollment courses be comparable to that of the same courses taught to the institution’s other students. 

In winter 2023, HLC revamped its faculty qualification policy. The new policy allows institutions of higher education to determine their own faculty qualification standards. The more than 900 institutions accredited by HLC also have the option of utilizing the previous rule, which required that instructors possess an academic degree relevant to what they are teaching and at least one level above the level at which they teach. It’s worth noting that many high school teachers do not have advanced graduate training in specific disciplines because it is not a requirement of high school teacher licensure, as such the majority of these teachers would be ineligible under the strictest faculty qualification standards, at least without obtaining another advanced degree first. Likewise, high schools that largely serve students of color are less likely to offer any dual enrollment courses. The old rule also required a full list of its instructors and their academic credentials be made available to students. 

HLC’s new rule opens up the possibility that institutions could adopt standards that allow for considerations other than degree type held or number of credit hours completed toward a credential when determining faculty qualifications to teach dual enrollment courses. For example, the institution may consider an instructor’s minimum threshold of experience, research and/or scholarship, recognized achievement, and/or other activities and factors. This policy change could allow instructors with expertise and training in a field or licensed profession where people do not traditionally earn advanced degrees or where advanced degrees programs (such as metalwork and fabrication or cosmetology) are not offered to still qualify to be instructors in a program where students are pursuing an associate or bachelor’s degree. 8 Instructors with practical knowledge of the field who can provide students an industry-focused education as well as mentorship are crucial for success. This could be helpful in expanding the pool of available instructors for high-demand workforce training and educational opportunities related to skilled trades or for technical classes, which would in turn help more students have an opportunity to get a jumpstart on these careers by gaining credits in high school. While this policy change may open pathways for career and technical education (CTE) or other work-based learning dual enrollment programs, it remains to be seen whether other agencies will see this as a model worth replicating. Additionally, given the number of other agencies that regulate dual enrollment, it’s difficult to understand how changes to accreditor policies and procedures will interact with existing legislation and standards. While flexible requirements about faculty qualifications may be good for access, they are potentially problematic unless institutions also update their assumptions and reflect the change in their credit acceptance policies. Additionally, steps must be taken to ensure this change in policy does not result in loss of rigor and academic standards. 

Review of Proposed Programs

Accreditors may occasionally call for special or additional reviews when an institution undergoes a change like a merger, change in ownership, offering courses at a higher or lower degree level than currently authorized, adding graduate programs when an upper division did not previously exist, and more. Under U.S. Department of Education regulation, accreditors must review any proposed changes an institution makes that are significant departures from the educational mission, programs, or mode of delivery since the institution’s last accreditation review. Some changes like changes in educational programs, changes in modality or entering into a contract for an unaccredited education provider to offer 25–50 percent of a program do not require approval by the commission of the accrediting agency. While establishing a dual enrollment program with a high school is a change it generally carries low-risk and will not fundamentally change the institution or educational mission. An accreditor may still require institutions that enter into these partnerships to ensure appropriate notification and prior approval of off-campus instructional sites where dual enrollment courses and programs are offered but only if needed. 

When a college establishes a joint, dual, or concurrent degree program with a high school, or in a field of study, degree level, or mode of delivery not previously included in the institution’s accreditation, this substantive change proposal is evaluated at the accreditor’s next regularly scheduled meeting. The proposal may be approved, deferred pending additional information, or disapproved. Compliance with the substantive change reporting and approval standard are the key for getting dual enrollment programs off the ground. The NECHE review requires high school faculty to meet the teaching, learning and scholarship standards outlined by the accreditor. The substantive change application requires a list of faculty and their qualifications, NECHE also notes if the dual enrollment faculty member doesn’t meet the institution’s criteria for faculty qualification the applicant should explain how they determined the person is qualified to teach the course. TRACS asks institutions offering dual enrollment courses and programs to notify the agency of the dual enrollment instructional locations by submitting the appropriate Non-Substantive Institutional Change Form.

Recruitment and Eligibility

NECHE’s “Policy on Dual Enrollment Programs” also outlines how institutions can prepare substantive change proposals for dual enrollment programs. NECHE requires commission review of dual enrollment programs as a “substantive change” 9 before implementation if the high school instructors are not selected, supervised, and evaluated by the institution . For example, the guidelines provide an expectation that an institution can demonstrate how it will ensure dual enrollment students are prepared for college level coursework and how they’ll be recruited. Institutions submitting substantive change applications must describe how students will be recruited and how the institution will maintain appropriate oversight of recruitment materials and enrollment decisions. The recruitment process can look different across secondary and postsecondary institutions with some using co-branded messaging to inform students and families about their programs (and student eligibility requirements). It can also be targeted recruitment to underrepresented students like distributing materials in multiple languages. 

While inclusive communications strategies can help marginalized students learn about dual enrollment, the best way to grow equitable programs is to rethink enrollment criteria.

Too few students get the opportunity to participate in dual enrollment, but more robust recruitment efforts can change that. While inclusive communications strategies can help marginalized students learn about dual enrollment, the best way to grow equitable programs is to rethink enrollment criteria. While some level of vetting may be educationally necessary, students can be locked out of dual enrollment by overly rigid requirements, such as minimum standardized test scores and nonessential prerequisites . Likewise, there are students who may be able to demonstrate proficiency or academic readiness in a subject but can’t simply because the pre-requisite course is not offered in their high school. When reviewing how students will be recruited for dual enrollment programs, accreditors should evaluate whether recruitment is strategic, inclusive, and responsive to student and district needs. 

TRACS specifies in its Admissions and Transparency policy that advertising, recruiting, and admissions information for dual enrollment students must adequately and accurately represent the programs, requirements, and services available. Similar to other accreditor standards governing integrity and ethics in advertising, TRACS reiterates that statements and other representations about credit transferability must be accurate and transcription practices for dual enrollment students must be consistent with those in effect for all other students. 

HLC also outlines specific guidelines for dual credit courses, or those courses that are taught to high school students for which the students receive both high school and college credit. HLC reviews dual credit activities at least at the time of an institution’s comprehensive evaluation. 10 Dual credit courses or programs must have equivalent learning outcomes and levels of achievement to its higher education curriculum.

It’s worth noting here that dual enrollment programs across the country and occasionally in the same state have different student eligibility criteria. A look at New England states reveals just how varied the recruitment and enrollment processes for dual enrollment are. Maine’s Aspirations Program , which allows high school students in the state to receive academic credits toward a high school diploma, and a post-secondary degree, 11 requires students to have a 3.0 GPA, 12 have parent approval and school unit approval, and have satisfactorily completed any course prerequisites . Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Dual Enrollment Partnership does not have a GPA requirement, but students must be state residents, enrolled in a public or nonpublic secondary school and meet all course prerequisites per the policies of the participating college or university. Many but not all states have specific eligibility requirements including, SAT/ACT score, minimum performance on a state examination, and/or minimum overall or subject area GPA requirements, as previous academic performance is an important indicator for the likelihood of success in dual enrollment. Dual enrollment programs have a vested interest in ensuring that participating students are likely to pass the courses. Students enrolled in dual credit courses, or courses for which they receive both high school and college credit for the same course, that do not pass a course face an additional burden because a failing grade can also affect their high school completion.

Who Else Is Responsible for Evaluating Dual Enrollment?

As of May 2022, forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have policies that regulate the design and implementation of dual or concurrent enrollment. State policy may dictate which students are eligible, which institutions are allowed or required to participate in dual enrollment, requirements for credit transfer, and quality and data reporting requirements. For example, several states, including Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, and Mississippi, require every high school in the state to participate in the dual enrollment program. 13 While Illinois and Indiana specify that dual credit coursework is transferable to all public institutions in the state, Alaska and Wyoming do not state which postsecondary institution types are required to accept credits in the state policy. New Jersey’s policy on high school enrollment in college courses states that district boards of education and partner colleges shall ensure that college courses for high school students are taught by college faculty with academic rank. Adjunct faculty and members of the district staff who have a minimum of a master’s degree may also be included. Louisiana policies state that dual enrollment instructors must meet the postsecondary institution’s policy on minimum faculty qualifications required to teach the dual enrollment course as required by the accreditor. 14 To address some of the transparency and predictability concerns around credit transfer policy, states like Florida utilize common numbering and articulation policies while Indiana gives students course and institution-level information through its Core Transfer Library . These state requirements support broader access or other goals. 

As they respond to calls for increased technical education, some accreditors of specific programs, such as nursing, have also assumed responsibility for the oversight of CTE and postsecondary vocational programs. For example, public postsecondary education programs in the field of practical nursing programs in New York State come under the oversight of the New York State Board of Regents, State Education Department, Office of the Professions (Public Postsecondary Vocational Education, Practical Nursing) .

In addition to the federally recognized accreditors that oversee Title IV institutions offering dual enrollment, there is a professional association, the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP), that started setting standards for dual enrollment programs in 2003. NACEP is one of the main sources states look to on dual enrollment standards. While not required, some state concurrent enrollment programs encourage colleges to participate in the NACEP accreditation process. The agency’s standards apply to both concurrent enrollment partnerships and college-provided faculty model programs. 15 At present, 134 concurrent enrollment partnerships hold NACEP accreditation across 132 institutions. These include two and four-year, public and private institutions across twenty-six U.S. states. The NACEP standards cover six areas: partnership, faculty, assessment, curriculum, students, and program evaluation. NACEP’s work to center and elevate practitioners in the field of concurrent enrollment is similar though not identical to that of other accreditors. While they evaluate quality, the focus is on practitioners and the formal partnerships between the secondary and post secondary institutions. The goal of NACEP’s standards is to ensure that resources and education provided to high school students through dual enrollment programs is consistent with those provided to traditional college students. Likewise, NACEP seeks to ensure that all students have equitable access to quality dual and concurrent enrollment.

Looking Ahead

Dual enrollment programs, particularly those programs that are fully funded by a school district or state, are a powerful tool that can open up opportunities to low-income and rural students in under-resourced communities. These programs can also address the equity gaps that persist in access to advanced and college-level coursework. Given the tremendous impact dual enrollment can have on a student’s academic life and long-term financial well-being, stakeholders should advance policies that expand enrollment in such programs and ensure high-quality programs. Accreditor regulations must continue to evolve to better meet these goals.

Given the tremendous impact dual enrollment can have on a student’s academic life and long-term financial well-being, stakeholders should advance policies that expand enrollment in such programs and ensure high-quality programs.

Accreditors should revisit faculty qualification standards to ensure that these standards align with best practices in the field and don’t artificially lock CTE educators out of dual enrollment programs. Accreditors should also issue special guidance for institutions on standards for dual enrollment programs so that those postsecondary and secondary institutions looking to establish partnerships understand the rigorous requirements and expectations. Accreditors play a key role in regulating and ensuring the quality of dual enrollment programs and their requirements on student access and outcomes are the cornerstone of a quality higher education experience.

While changes to the 2023–24 IPEDS data collection included a significant rewording that changed “dual enrolled students” terminology to “high school students enrolled in college courses for credit” for clarity, as well as a new part collecting counts of high school students enrolled in college courses for credit, better data on dual enrollment is still needed. State data systems must be able to collect comprehensive data on student access and outcomes in dual enrollment to help inform policy; this includes student demographic information as well as data on the type of dual credit taken, number of credits taken, and whether student was a CTE or non-CTE participant.

For students in secondary school districts that offer no or very few AP courses, dual enrollment is one of the only ways to gain college credit in high school. States should require all school districts to send information about the availability and eligibility of dual enrollment to families in multiple languages with clear, concise messaging about any related costs. States should also consider how eligibility requirements create artificial barriers to entry for students who do not meet the overall student performance minimums but could, through alternate means, illustrate their competency and preparedness for dual enrollment coursework. This says nothing of the work states could do in helping credential more high school teachers to qualify to teach dual enrollment, thus increasing access and opportunity for students.

While some states have statewide transfer or articulation agreements that require public colleges and universities to accept credits earned through dual enrollment, all should have protocols in place to reduce the risk of credit loss for dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment can have a significant and positive impact on students but the states, accreditors, practitioners, and professional associations must work collectively to strengthen and expand dual enrollment offerings.

• This number includes enrolled undergraduate students under the age of 18. John Fink, “What Happened to Community College Enrollment During the First Years of the Pandemic? It Depends on the Students’ Age,” Community College Research Center, January 9, 2023,  https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/easyblog/what-happened-to-community-college-enrollment-depends-students-age.html .
• Some states use ”dual” and ”concurrent” enrollment interchangeably, and some states define dual enrollment as students being enrolled at both the college and high school, and concurrent as taking college courses at the high school. This commentary uses “dual enrollment” to capture both types of programs.
• Early college high schools, such as Bard Early College High School, allow students to progress toward a high school diploma while simultaneously receiving up to two years of college credit, through enrollment in high school and college classes. These classes are a part of the high school curriculum and are offered at the high school, not an alternate location.
• Some students participate in a form of dual enrollment called dual credit wherein college credits the student receives can be used to satisfy high school graduation requirements.
• There are no federally recognized accrediting agencies for the secondary education system. While all public K–12 schools must meet standards set by the state government with private and independent schools sometimes opting to undertake their own accreditation process, it is not a requirement that they be recognized by an accrediting agency or governing body.
• “DEAC and the institution can show that the circumstances requiring the period of noncompliance are beyond the institution’s control, such as. . . . Instructors who do not meet the agency’s typical faculty standards, but who are otherwise qualified by education or work experience, to teach courses within a dual or concurrent enrollment program, as defined in 20 U.S.C. 7801, or career and technical education courses.” From “Distance Education Accrediting Commission, Accreditation Handbook: Policies, Procedures, Standards and Guides of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission,” Distance Education Accrediting Commission, April 5, 2022, https://www.deac.org/UploadedDocuments/Handbook/DEAC_Accreditation_Handbook.pdf
• This is also true of the Advanced Placement wherein an institution may give no credit for a score of 3 but offer the same number of credits for a score of 4 or 5 on the AP examination. Likewise a student may get three general credits for a humanities course but four credits for a statistics or physics course.
• HLC’s “achievement of academic credentials” standard for faculty qualifications states that an instructor should possess an academic degree relevant to what they are teaching and at least one level above the level at which they teach, except in programs for terminal degrees. In terminal degree programs, an instructor possesses the same level of degree. See “Institutional Policies and Procedures for Determining Faculty Qualifications: HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation and Assumed Practices,” HLC, November 2023, https://download.hlcommission.org/FacultyGuidelines_OPB.pdf .
• A substantive change is a change in mission, scope or structure that must be reported and approved by the accrediting agency before implementation to ensure the changes do not negatively impact the institution’s ability to meet standards.
• HLC conducts comprehensive reviews at various points in the accreditation process, when the institution seeks initial accreditation, during years four and ten when the institutions seeks reaffirmation of accreditation and/or after an institution has been placed on probation or issued a show-cause (a kind of sanction wherein the institution must explain why its accreditation should not be removed).
• All of the participating institutions—University of Maine System, Maine Community College System, and Maine Maritime Academy—have NECHE accreditation.
• Freshmen, sophomores and students who do not meet the GPA requirement may qualify for an exception if the student receives a recommendation from the secondary school administration or teacher following an assessment of the student by the school administration and the receiving post-secondary institution approves them for participation.
• This may students having access to a full suite of traditional college courses or a just few dual enrollment CTE courses.
• The policy specifically states faculty qualification should comply with SACSCOC or Council on Occupational Education credential guidelines. See “Academic Affairs Policy 2.22: Minimum Requirements for Dual Enrollment,” Louisiana Board of Regents, revised June 14, 2023, https://www.laregents.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AA-2.22-Dual-Enrollment_with-new-modality_6.14.23.pdf .
• NACEP defines college provided faculty as any college credit-bearing courses taught to high school students by college provided faculty regardless of location or delivery method. This enrollment is due to a partnership between the high school and college/university.

Tags: high school students , college accreditation

Tiara Moultrie, Fellow

Tiara Moultrie is a fellow at The Century Foundation, focusing on higher education accountability.

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Faculty-Student/Alumni Collaborative Impact Grant

This grant supports innovative collaborative partnerships between Tisch faculty and students/recent alumni on creative research projects. It aims to foster interdisciplinary inquiry and meaningful partnerships that contribute to key areas of impact.

Areas of Impact:

Projects should contribute to one or more of the following areas:.

• Climate Crisis: Projects exploring artistic responses to the climate emergency and/or advancing artistic methodologies to develop climate solutions; investigating sustainable practices in the arts; using creative methods to communicate environmental issues.
• Arts & Health: Projects exploring the contributions of creative practice to individual and collective physical, mental and social well-being, including therapeutic applications of creative practices; investigating the role of the arts in public health communication; examining how creative production can contribute to improved accessibility practices.
• Global Lens / Interaction with NYU's Global Sites: Projects leveraging NYU's international network for collaborative research, exploring global themes through local lenses, fostering cross-cultural creative dialogue. 
• Civic Engagement and Global Democratic Norms: Projects exploring the role of the arts (historical, current or future) in promoting civic engagement and discourse, advancing the role of artists in civic life, examining how creative expression intersects with, interprets and challenges democratic values. 
• Arts & Science: Interdisciplinary projects that bridge/merge/integrate artistic and scientific methodologies, promote creation of new forms and new technologies resulting from arts & science collaborations, and use emergent technologies to explore scientific concepts through artistic modalities.

Eligibility:

• Open to teams consisting of at least one Tisch faculty member and one Tisch student (grad or undergrad) and/or Recent Tisch Alumni (no more than 3 years post-grad)
• Both faculty and student/alumni participants must be identified prior to application and actively participate in the application process
• Applications can be submitted by either the faculty member or the student/alumni, but only one application per team will be accepted

Application Requirements:

1. application:.

• A description of research interests and questions driving the proposed activity
• Detailed project plan (timeline, milestones, roles, etc.)
• Define the collaborative relationship and explain the collaborative nature of the project
• Expected benefits/impact on NYU/Tisch community and/or field of study/practice
• How the project contributes to one or more of the identified areas of impact
• Plan for research dissemination

2. Short statements (1 page) from each faculty and student/alumni participant addressing:

• Individual research interests related to the project
• Expected personal/professional growth from the collaboration
• Statement of commitment to collaborative partnership

3. A budget indicating how grant funds will be utilized ( using this template )

4. letter of support from nyu global site (if applicable), important notes:.

• This grant is not intended for faculty to hire students/alumni as assistants but to support meaningful collaborative partnerships
• Projects must engage with at least one department/program at Tisch or NYU other than the applicants' home department(s)
• Grantees will be responsible for organizing and executing their projects, with limited administrative support from Tisch Creative Research

Application portal will open September 2024

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Cleveland high school students land stem career exploration experience , doreen zudell.

This summer, 10 Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) students landed the opportunity to participate in the NASA Glenn High School Career Exploration and Research Experience program at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. 

High school students were paired with a mentor in their field of study who they shadowed for eight weeks during a hands-on workplace experience exploring their interests. The students prepared presentations to highlight their experiences and discussed how the program will impact their career choices. 

“This opportunity has substantially helped me develop my soft skills and technical skills,” said CSMD participant JayLeesa Jones. “I have come to realize that I can reach new heights as an intern, team member, and aspiring engineer!” 

This unique, paid STEM engagement learning experience is part of a series of NASA Glenn programs focused on attracting and retaining a diverse, skilled workforce. The Glenn Career Exploration and Research Experience program is made possible through a Space Act Agreement between NASA Glenn and Youth Opportunities Unlimited.  

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Perm Krai Capital of Culture

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Project initators: 

“ Cultural Planning will help to ensure the Perm region will remain distinctive and unique” , Mr. Protasevich said. “It will mean planning ways to support and preserve our heritage, developing appealing opportunities for artists and musicians regardless of age, and generating education and employment. It will mean building a creative community with a buzz.”

“Some of the identified objectives of “Perm krai international:young journalists@school” project include facilitating greater communication and cooperation among young community and official organizations in Perm krai”, said the Vice-Minister of Perm krai.

“Perm Krai International: young journalistes@school”

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The international children festival of theatre arts “Long Break”

What is the international child festival of theatre arts “Long Break”? It is a real holiday for young spectators and their parents. The international child festival of theatre arts “Long Break” will be hold from the 30th of April to the 5th of May. It will be in Perm and Lysva. It will be hold under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Culture, Youth Politics and Mass Communications of Perm Krai. The program of the festival is prepared by Russian and foreign experts of child theatre. There are the most interesting for children events of the world arts. The “Long Break” familiarizes children with actual artists. It is the platform where people communicate with people using the language of modern arts which is understandable for a new generation.

The festival “The White Nights in Perm”

• The participants of the festival of land art “Ural Myths” will create art objects using natural materials. The objects will have the same mythological idea.
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• The exhibition “Mammoth’s track” will gather mammoths from different corners of Russia on Perm’s territory. There will be even a famous mammoth Dima.
• And at last the international festival of street arts «Open sky» will represent the various program: carnival processions, a 5-day master class «Mask Art», street shows and performances, performances of Russian and foreign street theatres.

The IX International festival “Heavenly Fair of Ural”

From the 26th to the 3rd of July the IX International festival “Heavenly Fair of Ural” takes place in Kungur. There will be a fight for the I Privolzhski Federal Disctrict Cup for aerostatics and the VII Perm Krai Open Cup for aerostatics.This year Kungur won’t hold rating competitions which results are taking into general account of the pilots. They counted on creating entertainment activities “Air battles over Kungur”. There will be the representatives of sub-units of ultralight aviation, detachment of parachute troops and water means. All the battles will take place straight over the city. And natives will take part in the festival too.According to initial data 15 aeronauts and about 50 ultralight aviation pilots expressed willingness to take part at the festival. And a dirigible pilot confirmed his participation.Ultralight aviation pilots will take part in the “Air games” within the festival. As last year a campsite of ultralight aviation will base in an area near a village Milniki.

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• MyU : For Students, Faculty, and Staff

Regents Professor Lawrence Que Jr. retires after 41 years at University of Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (8/13/2024) – Regents Professor Lawrence “Larry” Que Jr. retired from the Department of Chemistry on May 26th, 2024, after serving the University of Minnesota for more than four decades. Que’s tremendous impact in the field of bioinorganic chemistry earned him the title of Regents Professor in 2009 and election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2022. 

The early years

Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, Que’s chemistry career began in the undergraduate chemistry program at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, Philippines. He earned his bachelor’s degree 1969 before arriving at the University of Minnesota to continue his chemistry education in the PhD program, which he completed in 1973. During his PhD, Que was advised by Louis H. Pignolet. Throughout his doctoral studies, Que used NMR spectroscopy to research intramolecular rearrangement reactions of transition metal complexes. He went on to conduct postdoctoral research under Professor Richard H. Holm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973-74) and under Professor Eckard Münck at the University of Minnesota (1975-77) which set the stage for his lifelong career in bioinorganic chemistry.

With his affinity for and expertise in iron chemistry firmly in place by 1977, Que started his independent career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. While at Cornell, Que utilized Resonance Raman spectroscopy to study dioxygenases; these enzymes would ultimately form the bedrock of Que’s research for the next 40 years. 

Return to Minnesota

In 1983, Que returned to the University of Minnesota, this time as a member of the faculty.  “Returning to Minnesota was the best decision I ever made for my career,” Que says. “I fell in love with this department during graduate school. I was very happy to have the opportunity to return, it’s been an honor to contribute to building our program for the last four decades.”

Described in more than 550 publications, Que’s research spanned the subfields of stereochemistry, catalysis, and crystallography. He established himself as an expert and innovator in bioinorganic chemistry, playing a pioneering role in understanding the function that nonheme iron centers play in dioxygen activation in biology. His work produced the first synthetic models for high-valent iron-oxo intermediates, which are crucial for understanding the electronic structures, spectroscopic properties, and reactivities of these units. Additionally, Que led efforts to create functional models for various iron oxygenases, including catechol dioxygenases, α-ketoglutarate-dependent oxygenases, and cis-dihydroxylating arene dioxygenases. These chemical tools aim to perform two specific types of chemical reactions that enable stereospecific alkane hydroxylation and highly enantioselective olefin cis-dihydroxylation. These advancements could lead to more environmentally friendly and sustainable alternatives to current heavy-metal oxidation catalysts. Que’s key dioxygen discoveries were published in ACS  Chemical Reviews in 2004, in an article titled  “Dioxygen Activation at Mononuclear Nonheme Iron Active Sites:  Enzymes, Models, and Intermediates ;” this paper would turn out to be the most cited work of his career. His prolific research portfolio garnered invitations to present more than 400 lectures around the world. 

Over the years, Que’s research group focused on the topics of iron, oxygen, and biocatalysis in the area of bioinorganic chemistry, The group’s primary effort, involving a combination of biochemical, synthetic inorganic, and spectroscopic approaches, was aimed at elucidating the oxygen activation mechanisms of nonheme iron enzymes, designing functional models for such enzymes, trapping and characterizing reaction intermediates, and developing bio-inspired oxidation catalysts for green chemistry applications. Que advised 55 graduate students and 80 postdoctoral researchers over the course of his career. Over 50 Que Group alumni have tenure-track or tenured faculty positions in colleges or universities.

Que’s critical dioxygen research earned him the title of  Regents Professor in 2009. A quote from the citation for the award reads “Undoubtedly, Professor Que is currently the top bioinorganic chemist in the world. In his chosen field, oxygen activation of iron-containing enzymes and biomimetic compounds, his group, in my estimation, is at least three years ahead of his closest competitors. Almost single-handedly he has developed the major fraction of the synthetic chemistry of iron in high-oxidation states. This chemistry is vital to our understanding of many processes in biochemistry, to the development of new drugs, and most importantly, to developing a green chemistry that can alleviate the problems caused by pollutants and pathogens that afflict human health." The Regents Professorship is the highest honor the University of Minnesota bestows on its faculty. The title recognizes faculty who have made exceptional contributions to the University through teaching, research, scholarship, or creative work, and contributions to the public good.

Beyond his research success, Que demonstrated significant commitment to service to the University across his career. He is credited with establishing the University of Minnesota as a world-renowned center of excellence in bioinorganic chemistry. He organized the International Conference on Oxygen Intermediates in Nonheme Metallobiochemistry (1996) and the Ninth International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry (1999). From 1999 to 2002 – and again from 2008 - 2012 – he served as the inaugural PI on the National Institutes of Health  Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant that brings faculty and students from various departments together. He also led the effort to establish the University of Minnesota Center for Metals in Biocatalysis, which allowed faculty and students from multiple units to collaborate in exploring the roles of metals in biology.

Que was the first editor-in-chief of the Springer  Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (JBIC)  and served the journal for 20 years .  JBIC – the official journal of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry since 1996 – is a peer-reviewed journal promoting the field of biological inorganic chemistry internationally. The publication aims to provide insight into systems of metals in biology at biochemical, molecular, and cellular levels.

For his research, service, and mentorship, Que has been honored with many awards over the course of his career. These honors include the 3M/Alumni Distinguished Professorship (1999), the National Institutes of Health MERIT Award (2000), the UMN Distinguished Teaching Professorship (2000), the Royal Society of Chemistry Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Award (2011), and the American Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry (2017). He was also elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2008, and a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2011. In 2022, Que was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer.

LQ Fest: 40 Years of Fun with Iron Chemistry at the University of Minnesota

In July 2023, the Department of Chemistry hosted LQ Fest: 40 Years of Fun with Iron Chemistry at the University of Minnesota in honor of Que. 19 of Que’s collaborators, mentees, and even his daughter, Emily Que – who is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin – presented lectures, stories, and memories related to Que’s research and career. When recalling the event he said “I’ve loved my job. I’ve loved the people that I’ve worked with. I spent the last 50 years of my life dedicated to chemistry, and I never looked back. The event was a wonderful opportunity to get together with many people that I’ve cared about to celebrate my career.” 

The next chapter

“Nothing changes, really. I’ve always thought about chemistry, and I’ll continue to think about chemistry all the time,” Que said. In this next chapter of life, Que is adopting a  come what may attitude. He says he is looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren in Texas and embarking on new adventures with his wife. 

Memories and Notes from the Chemistry Faculty

"Larry is an extraordinary scientist who has made incredible discoveries in the field of bioinorganic chemistry that have changed the way we think about how important iron-containing enzymes work. His passion for research is unparalleled, and his infectious enthusiasm has made a difference in the lives of many students over his career. His leadership was critical in making UMN a respected centerpiece of high quality bioinorganic chemistry research and teaching, well-known across the globe. On a personal level, I am deeply grateful for his mentorship during my career at the University of Minnesota; his insights and advice made a major difference in my life! Thank you, Larry, and congratulations on your retirement!" – Professor Bill Tolman, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, St. Thomas University

"The University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry has been lucky to count Prof. Larry Que among our faculty. His chemical creativity and passion have had a big impact on bioinorganic chemistry as a field, and his thoughtfulness as a colleague has had a major impact on our department community." – Professor Christy Haynes, Chemistry Department Head

"Larry has been a standout in the bioinorganic community, rising to the highest levels of academic achievement at the University of Minnesota as a Regent’s professor, and nationally, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.  I have always appreciated his scholarly approach to studying catalysis at the fundamental level for connecting with biology.  When I joined the department in 2012, starting my lab’s research program in chemical biology, I always loved hearing from the outside community of what high regard they held for him as a giant in the field of iron-mediated (bio)catalysis.  I also benefited significantly from Larry’s effort for initiating our NIH T32 Chemistry and  Biology Interface training grant (CBITG), for which he served as the first director, and established a trajectory of continual funding for the next 25 years.  This grant has impacted the careers of well over 100 graduate students, and has been a true gem of the three departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics (BMBB) and Medicinal Chemistry.  Beyond being a true iron man in his field, one of Larry’s main legacies is a long track record of highly successful trainees, which was on full display at last year’s retirement party, Larry Que Fest. He’s leaving our department having made an indelible mark and will be deeply missed. " – Professor William C.K. Pomerantz

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