While most high school students spent their summers working at local restaurants or relaxing poolside, four Irving ISD scholars swapped the serving trays and beach towels for lab coats and petri dishes as interns at UT Southwestern Medical Center research labs. Mariana Gomez and Aubree Rooney of MacArthur, Jean Luna Rojo of Irving, and Surabhi Lamsal of Singley were among the 51 participants in the hospital’s STARS program. Launched in 1991, STARS (Science Teacher Access to Resources at Southwestern) aims to improve the quality of science education in North Central Texas by making the vast educational resources at UT Southwestern available to middle and high school science teachers and students. For eight weeks, the students worked alongside a faculty host in a research laboratory. In addition to the research, students participated in group meetings with the program’s 51 participants – selected from a pool of more than 900. They also heard from renowned researchers in various seminars and presented their own research last week.
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