A cohort of students and teachers from Canutillo High school are getting more than just some fun in the sun this summer by embarking on a five-week hands-on research opportunity alongside science and engineering professors at the University of Texas at El Paso.
CHS science teachers Ian Murphy and Ernesto Villanueva along with students Kaitlynn Burney, Angel Rodriguez, April Ruiz and Brittany Varela were selected to take part in Project ACE – Action for Equity program that is part of the UTEP Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity: Southwest Consortium of Health-Oriented Education Leaders and Research Scholars (BUILDing Scholars) pipeline.
The interdisciplinary program aims to get more underrepresented high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds to get interested in college degrees in engineering as well as biomedical and behavioral sciences. Its major goal is to prepare students from Del Valle High School, Canutillo High School and Gadsden High School for biomedical careers.
That program was made possible through a $1.35 million grant funded by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Science Education Partnership Award. BUILDing Scholars is an NIH-funded research-intensive training opportunity meant to diversify future generations of biomedical investigators and will provide participants with mentorship and research based curriculum to help foster their interest in biomedical, science and engineering.
“This is an exciting opportunity for our students to get a real taste of what life in a science or engineering lab is like conducting important research,” said CHS Interim Principal Candice Marrufo. “Our students are bright and ambitious and deserve this type of investment to get them excited about these fields of study where Hispanic students are often underrepresented but are highly capable. Our teachers also get the chance to hone their research skills and bring their experiences back to CHS.”