School’s In for Summer

While many of her classmates were waiting tables at restaurants during the summer of 2004, Alicia Smith was in an NIEHS lab investigating how exposure to sodium arsenite regulates the procarcinogenic and proinflammatory enzyme cyclooxygenase 2. Smith, then a rising senior at Orange High School in Hillsborough, North Carolina, is one of hundreds of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students nationwide who have participated in a paid summer student research fellowship supported by the NIEHS or the Community Outreach and Education Program of one of a number of NIEHS centers around the country. According to the sponsors and participants, these fellowships play an important role in exposing students to real-world science and encouraging them to pursue careers in environmental and biomedical research or health care.