Research Experiences for High School Students
Research Experiences for High School Students (REHSS) will introduce STEM-interested high school students to the scientific process in a real-world environment. Students will take part in every aspect of the research project from designing the experiment, collecting data, doing analyses, compiling, visualizing, and analyzing results; and presenting a final report. This activity will function as a pilot project to build a framework for implementation across as much of the jurisdiction as possible as distance will be a limiting factor for participation. To implement REHSS, a team that includes a high school student, their home STEM instructor and a Mayville State STEM faculty will be work to create a research topic and experiment. High school students may be recruited through the existing network of science fairs and Science Olympiad participation, or in conjunction with students involved in activity 'Scientists in the Classroom' and/or 'Research Ride-Alongs'. Projects will be designed to last a semester and may include virtual meetings between teachers, students and faculty co-designing a project including development of a detailed timeline is part of the design of the project.
REHSS will get your students doing science to answer questions in your communities, and will also get them paid to do their research projects! That's even better than doing that same work for free!
About the REHSS Program
Note on REHSS supplies/equipment and salary: These projects come with funds available to pay for students time - because STEM professionals get paid to do the jobs we love to do, and we want to help train your future STEM professionals! Funds are also available to help purchase the materials, supplies, and/or consumables for doing STEM-related research projects. The maximum award for supplies/consumables is $625 (this must be justified in a budget justification). Participating REHSS students must be hired through Mayville State’s HR office to employment opportunity, and will be paid at $15 per hour for a maximum of 100 hours per REHSS project. Mayville State faculty are eligible for up to two $500 stipends as required by the project duration, instrument run/training time, etc. Only students outside of Mayville, ND are eligible for travel reimbursement when traveling to/from Mayville State for lab/analysis work or training. PLEASE NOTE - HS students must be at least 16 years of age to participate in this program!
How to Get Your Students Into an REHSS Project
The first step is to talk with your student about the kinds of projects that they might be interested in! What sorts of things are you doing in your STEM curriculum this semester? Once you have a 'ballpark' project, shoot one of our participating Mayville State STEM faculty an email and see how they can help! Alternatively, you can contact Dr. Khwaja Hossain or Dr. Robert Miess directly to help point you to what faculty contact might be best!
Available Funding for REHSS Projects
We anticipate at least 8 REHSS opportunities per year will be made available to STEM-interested high school students!
- Research Student Salary! 8 x $1,500 research salary for REHSS students (100 hours per student per experience maximum paid at $15.00 per hours)
- Travel reimbursement. 15 x $100 travel reimbursements high school REHSS students participating in this program (as needed) to travel to Mayville State faculty member's research location or laboratory;
- Supplies for your STEM research project. 8 x $625 maximum per project for supplies and consumables.
Ready to get started?
Once you have identified a Mayville State faculty member to work with your HS teacher) and your student, reach out to your Mayville State faculty member and ask them to fill out the application. Review times for these applications are generally going to be very short - you should get a response after the application has been submitted quite quickly - generally less than a week.
For your student's application, our faculty member will need the following (please supply to the Mayville State faculty member directly before they begin the application process):
- Your school name, your name (HS teacher and email address), subject(s) that the proposed project covers;
- The academic semester that the project will run (e.g. Fall 2026, Spring 2027);
- The project title;
- The research focus (500 characters) - short description of research activities that will be performed;
- Specific activities (1000 characters) - short description of overall project - design of the experiment, collecting data, doing analyses, compiling, visualizing, and analyzing results, etc.;
- A brief timeline of the project (1000 characters);
- Your role in the project;
- Dissemination plan (will results be presented at a science fair? If so, where?).
- Budget justification (each item, how many needed, approximate cost per item; number of hours required for the project @15/hour).
- Total cost for the project (Mayville State faculty, add stipend please!)
We suggest having your student write this up as a document, you checking it, and then sending this to your Mayville State contact so that they have this information to paste into the application form.
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Once you receive the grant award email, your student will need to apply for the position. This could take approximately a week, and your student will have to supply documentation to be hired on. After applying for the position they will receive further instructions from our Mayville State HR Office. How quickly they can be hired on officially depends on getting that information to our HR Office!
Once your student is in the system, they will use an online ap to keep track of their research hours - but information about all of that stuff will follow hiring in an email document that you will receive.
We look forward to hearing from you!