During 1992-1997 Prof. Lahti was the instructor
for the chemistry portion of the Science Enrichment Program (SEP), a
science camp at which 50 freshman students from opportunity-deprived
high schools around the northeastern USA did science with chemistry
professors and high school students. SEP was founded and administered
by Prof. Donald St. Mary of the UMass-Amherst Department of Mathematics
and Statistics, and was funded by the National Cancer Institute. It
involved training in chemistry, physics, math, biochemistry, computer
science, and language arts. SEP sessions lasted
for five intense, but very informative weeks and aimed to inspire high
aspirations in an atmosphere where discoveries happen every day, and
hard work in the class was followed by good fun outside the class. The
aim was to show each SEP attendee that (s)he could do science. SEP is
no longer active, but the memories live on. Most important, the students
who did the program continue to advance their education. We hope some
will consider science as a career!
For more information, see particulars of the Chemistry
activities in SEP. We hope you will find descriptions of the experiments
and activities of the students to be of interest.
