Two Westminster Public Schools students and a teacher spent the summer working inside cancer research labs at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus as part of a START pilot program, district officials said at the Board of Education meeting Aug. 26.

The pilot paired a teacher and two students with a research mentor in the Anschutz Department of Neurosurgery for an eight-week, hands-on experience that included working with tumor cell samples and presenting results at a campus poster session. Scott Troy, a biotechnology-pathway teacher at the Random Innovation Campus, told the board the work was not a simulation.

"It was a very real eight-week cancer research experience," Troy said, adding that students helped gather data that may contribute to published research. Meredith Tennis, a faculty member at CU Anschutz who leads the START effort, said the pilot tested a novel model — pairing a teacher with students in the lab — and that the program recently secured NIH funding.

"We've been working on getting funding from the NIH for four years, and we finally got that funding," Tennis said. She said the START program is part of the NCI Youth Enjoy Science (YES) effort and has five years of funding to expand summer research opportunities for middle and high school students, with longer mentored placements for eleventh- and twelfth-graders paired with teachers.

Troy said the teacher role allowed classroom curricula to be adapted from the lab experience so broader groups of students can benefit. He also said the teacher started one week before the students to learn lab practices and to scaffold the experience for the students.

The board heard that participants received stipends; Troy said the two students in the pilot were already 18 and had graduated when the internship began, so they did not receive school internship credit this year, but the program framework includes future internship credit and community-college credit options. Tennis said teachers will be eligible for graduate credits through the University of Colorado system under the full program.

Board members and district staff praised the partnership and the chance for students to see industry-standard tools and techniques prior to college.

Troy and Tennis said the START program will launch a larger cohort this year with multiple teacher-student triads, community events, and academic-year engagements to keep students connected to research over two years.