With a suite of programs in the STEM fields being offered for middle and high school students at Penn this summer, including many with scholarships and financial aid to defray costs, Philadelphia students have fewer excuses for experiencing a “summer slide.”

“Across the board, these programs give students a chance to spend time on Penn’s campus and familiarize themselves with what it’s like to be a college student,” says Jane Horwitz, director of the School of Arts & Sciences’ (SAS) Science Outreach Initiative (SOI). “We really want to encourage kids in the School District of Philadelphia and in city charter schools who have an inclination toward STEM to participate.”

The SOI has compiled a flyer, designed by Penn undergraduate students, detailing many of the STEM offerings to get the word out to local students.

The Penn Summer Academies, offered by SAS through the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, for example, are intensive, three-week, non-credit programs for high school students that blend lecture and experiential learning in biomedical research, chemistry, experimental physics, mathematics, and neuroscience. Students spend two to three hours in the classroom each day and an additional three or four in the lab.

“These programs fuse scientific and social theory with relevant applications in the lab,” says Lauren More, director of high school programs. “The participants have access to material and equipment that they might not otherwise encounter until graduate school in some cases.”

SAS also runs the two-week Penn Summer Prep program, through which students can choose two college-level modules in subjects from “Energy Resources” to “Darwin and the Rise of Naturalism.”

Both the Academies and the Summer Prep program reserve 10 percent of the program seats for Philadelphia public and charter school students, who can attend free of charge.

For animal-loving middle school students, the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Working Dog Center (WDC) is running four sessions of its Canine Handler Academy.

“We want to expose young adults to the working dog world,” says Vicki Berkowitz, associate director of the WDC. “The idea is to pique their curiosity as to what it means to train and take care of one of these dogs.”

Beginning sessions give participants a broad introduction to working dogs through hands-on learning and demonstrations, while two advanced sessions allow students to dig deeper, with one focused on exploring how search-and-rescue and law enforcement dogs are trained, and the other on experiencing what it’s like to be a professional working dog handler. Full and partial need-based scholarships are available, and past participants can return to be counselors-in-training for the younger students.

Many other offerings span the range of STEM fields:

• The Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s Summer Research Experience and the SAS Penn Laboratory Experiences in Natural Sciences allow high school students to enter the lab and work side-by-side with faculty and graduate students.

• Students in the highly selective QuarkNet High Energy Physics Experimental Group will learn how scientists try to answer big questions like, “How did the universe begin and evolve?”

• The Engineering Summer Academy gives highly motivated high school students the chance to earn college credit while gaining experience working with cutting-edge technology.

• Veterinarian hopefuls in high school or college can take part in Summer VETS, a week-long program that exposes participants to a taste of what to expect in veterinary school.

• The Penn Summer Science Initiative, offered through the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, meshes lectures, labs, and field trips to teach students about materials science and engineering.

• Girls in Engineering, Math and Science, or GEMS, provides middle schoolers with hands-on learning opportunities in materials science, bioengineering, nanotechnology, graphics, and computing.

Find out more about these and other STEM opportunities at the Penn SOI website.