Summer Science Program

The Summer Science Program (SSP) is an academic summer program where high school students experience college-level education and do research in celestial mechanics by studying the orbits of asteroids or biochemistry by studying the kinetic properties of enzymes. The program was established in 1959 at The Thacher School in Ojai, California. It now takes place on two astrophysics campuses, New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico and University of Colorado, Boulder in Boulder, Colorado, and two biochemistry campuses, Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana.
In the Astrophysics program, each team takes a series of images of a near-earth asteroid, then writes software to calculate its orbit and predict its future path. In the Biochemistry program, each team isolates and models an enzyme from a fungal crop pathogen, then designs a molecule to inhibit that enzyme.
Overview.
Each Summer Science Program campus hosts 36 participants and 7 faculty for 39 days. Faculty have integrated academic and residential roles. The participant experience is designed to be similar at all campuses. For the research, participants are organized into teams of three. The schedule includes classroom time, lab time, field trips (scientific and recreational) and guest lectures from working scientists and other professionals. Past guest speakers have included Maarten Schmidt, who has done pioneering work in quasars; Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate in physics; James Randi, magician and debunker of pseudoscience; Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development; Paul MacCready, creator of the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross; and Eric Allin Cornell, a Nobel laureate in physics.
The application process and admission criteria are similar to that of selective colleges. Primarily juniors (rising seniors) are admitted, with a few sophomores each year. There is a program fee, inclusive of tuition, room & board, and supplies. Need-based financial aid grants are available to cover part or all of the fee, with SSP guaranteeing to meet all demonstrated need. Donations to the nonprofit fund financial aid.
In 1991, the National Academies' Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications observed that "All participants go on to college. About 37 percent of the pre-1985 graduates are now working in science and medicine, and 34 percent in engineering, mathematics, and computer science (including the founder of Lotus Development Corporation)."
The program is co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology which are affiliate universities, and by Harvey Mudd College, which is an academic partner to the program.
History.
The program was established in 1959 at The Thacher School in Ojai, California, as a response to the launch of Sputnik 1 and the start of the Space Race. The Headmaster at Thacher was concerned that the country's top high school students were not being adequately informed and inspired about careers in the physical sciences. He decided to create an intense summer program to challenge such students and give them a taste of "doing real science," with assistance from Caltech, UCLA, Claremont Colleges, and Stanford. Financial support came from Hughes Aircraft.
The first SSP was led by Dr. Paul Routly and Dr. Foster Strong. In 1960, Dr. George Abell joined the program for his first of more than 20 summers at SSP.
The first year, SSP had 26 students. The students used data from the "Russian ephemeris" ("Ephemyeredi Mahlikh Planyet") to find asteroids to photograph, measured the positions, and submitted the data to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The students were excited to find that when they calculated the orbit of 9 Metis, their data resulted in a significant correction to the Russian ephemeris.
Women were admitted starting in 1969, and reached 50% of enrollment in 2010.
After 41 summers at Thacher, a significant threat to the continuation of SSP came in 2000, when Thacher School decided to use its entire campus for a different purpose. SSP alumni incorporated Summer Science Program, Inc., solicited funding largely from the alumni community, and found a new host campus. Beginning in 2000, SSP was held at the Happy Valley School, located just across the Ojai Valley from The Thacher School. In 2007, Happy Valley School was renamed Besant Hill School.
With the alumni rescue complete, they soon began looking to expand the program. In 2003 a second campus opened at New Mexico Tech in Socorro with the support of New Mexico Tech, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, and others. In 2010, the California campus moved to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, then in 2015 to University of Colorado Boulder.
In 2016, following three years of planning and preparation, a pilot of the first SSP in Biochemistry was held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Six alumni from the previous summer successfully ran through the new experiment. In 2017, the first SSP in Biochemistry was successfully held with 24 participants.
Through 2017, over 2,500 participants have attended 75 programs. All alumni and former faculty are "members" of the nonprofit for life, along with other members named by the Board. The Members elect Trustees annually, have access to an online database for networking, and are invited to an Annual Dinner held each fall.
Astronomical work.
For the first 50 years of the program, students took photographic images of main-belt asteroids (between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter). Starting in 2009 students took digital images of (much fainter) near-Earth asteroids (inside the orbit of Mars). The process of orbit determination is conceptually the same in both cases. First students take a series of images of asteroids. After identifying the asteroid, its position on the image relative to known stars is carefully calculated. That relative position is then used to determine the position of the asteroid in celestial coordinates (right ascension and declination) at the exact time the image was taken. The series of positions as the asteroid moves across the sky allows the student to fit an approximate orbit to the asteroid. The measured asteroid coordinates (not the calculated orbital elements) are submitted to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Over the decades SSP students have done their orbit determination calculations on mechanical calculators (1960s), then electronic calculators (1970s), then "mini-computers" (1980s), then personal computers (1990s and 2000s). In recent years they write their orbit determination programs in the Python programming language, employing the Gaussian method.
List of alumni.
The following is a list of notable alumni.