Our center is in its fifth year. Wayne State is located near the center of Detroit, making this an ideal location for working with teachers and students from Detroit Public Schools. Of the five teachers who have been associated with the program, the two lead teachers continue to be active and the three associate teachers were inactive this year for various reasons. Four of the five teachers work for the Detroit Public Schools and have been dealing with significant uncertainty as the district closes and repositions schools during each of the last several years. One of the associate teachers has moved from high school teaching to community college teaching; one has moved into an administrative position in the Detroit Public Schools, and the last has been kept busy with issues at his school.

For the second year we ran a high school student research program during the summer. Dr. Ray Brockhaus, one of our lead teachers ran the program. Four high school students from the Detroit Public Schools spent six weeks learning about modern science, using the QuarkNet cosmic ray detectors as a hands-on laboratory. One of our graduate students, Nagesh Kulkarni, taught them how to make web pages; our engineer guided them through the assembly of a QuarkNet cosmic ray detector; Profs. Karchin and Harr discussed current research in particle physics and the connection to cosmic rays; Dr. Conn presented a planetarium show; Prof. Cinabro discussed astrophysics, and Prof. Petrov discussed particle theory. The students are of minority backgrounds (3 African-American and 1 Arab-American) and families with few or no college graduates. Therefore, we include activities to introduce them to college life--campus tours, visits to the libraries, visits with researchers on campus, and discussions with university students.

In the coming year we would like to recruit additional associate teachers, perhaps working more closely with Detroit Public Schools. Detroit Public Schools is an urban school system dealing with numerous issues affecting student performance, and the incoming University President has expressed a desire for the university to work with the school system to better prepare students for college. QuarkNet is in a position to make a small contribution here