The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was among the sponsors of the inaugural Ivy Plus STEM Symposium & Workshop for Diverse Scholars, which took place on October 4–6, 2012, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Read the University of Pennsylvania's coverage of the event.
The conference was designed to encourage undergraduate students to pursue advanced training in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. It targeted students participating in the Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program, Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Minority Access to Research Careers, and Minority Biomedical Research Support (RISE) Program. Other interested students were encouraged to apply as well.
The two-day symposium featured a keynote address by Derrick Pitts, the senior scientist, chief astronomer, and planetarium director at the Franklin Institute Science Museum.
It also included more than a dozen panel sessions with faculty from top-tier universities. Three Harvard faculty members delivered symposium talks: Melissa Franklin, Mallinckrodt Professor and chair of physics; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor and chair of molecular and cellular biology; and Karine Gibbs, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology.
Additional representatives from Harvard — including Tiffany Horng, assistant professor of genetics and complex diseases at the School for Public Health, and Sorell Massenburg, a PhD student in applied physics — participated, along with Loni Philip Tabb, PhD '10, biostatistics, now an assistant professor at Drexel University. Also attending were faculty and staff from the other sponsoring institutions: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.
"GSAS is proud to be co-sponsoring this unprecedented symposium, which is a great opportunity for talented undergraduates to gain one-on-one access to faculty and administrative staff from some of the leading universities in the country," said Sheila Thomas, assistant dean for diversity and minority affairs at GSAS, who also spoke at the conference. "We think students will benefit from the chance to present their work, talk with faculty, and build relationships that will be valuable as they plan for graduate school."
Among other benefits, students got a chance to:
- Gain insight into interdisciplinary science and how research fields are overlapping in complementary ways to solve new problems
- Learn how a PhD in a STEM field can open doors and be leveraged for exciting career opportunities
- Meet faculty and hear about their research in emerging fields
- Present their own work to faculty, graduate students, and postdocs in a poster session
- Connect with peers and explore Philadelphia
Learn more: www.upenn.edu/IvyPlusSymposium