Twenty Orange County Students To Participate

Irvine, Calif., July 1, 2002 -- California's next generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians will participate in the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS), an intensive, interactive academic experience led by distinguished professors, researchers and scholars at UC Irvine.

COSMOS, which begins July 14, is a month-long residential program for top high school students. The 156 students participating at UCI, including 20 from Orange County, were selected for distinction in the sciences or mathematics, both in the classroom and through extracurricular activities such as science Olympiads, leadership and community service, or performance on standardized tests.

COSMOS courses address topics not traditionally taught in high schools, including aerospace engineering, astrophysics, computer games, California ecosystems, Earth system science, robotics, neuroscience and more. In addition, the students will take advantage of such on-campus resources as UCI faculty laboratories and field trips to local sites, including the Palomar Observatory, Laguna Lakes, San Joaquin Freshwater Marsh Reserve and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The state of California provides annual funding for the academies, which also include sites at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. COSMOS opened its doors to the first group of 304 academically advanced high school students in the summer of 2000; this year the statewide program received more than 600 applications and accepted upwards of 400 students. For more information, please visit, www.cosmos.uci.edu.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE: A TOP-10 PUBLIC UNIVERSITY