Ashley Wallace and PennRSSA content coordinator, Elaine Leigh, welcome scholars to the live demo. Schuyler Patton explains real world applications for material science to the scholars.
In July 2020, the LRSM contributed to the inaugural University of Pennsylvania Rising Scholar Success Academy (PennRSSA), a free-of-cost four-week summer program for rising seniors in the Philadelphia area. The entirely virtual program consisted of both live and asynchronous learning with the purpose of immersing students “… in an academic, career, and post-secondary preparatory experience.” The LRSM provided content on various materials science concepts in the form of pre-recorded lectures (6 total), supplemental readings, unit tests, and two live demonstrations to 807 rising seniors.
(58% women, 41% underrepresented minority) from 82 different high schools in the area as part of the PennRSSA “Academy” portion of the program.
With 97% describing their overall experience with the PennRSSA program as excellent or good, reports showed that scholars responded positively to learning about different careers and aspects of each field.