Mentorships are a distinguishing component of the OSSM curricula. Through the program, students work with more than 60 academic institutions, businesses, nonprofit organizations and government agencies in the Oklahoma City area, earning the opportunity to work alongside professionals in many fields including research, medicine and engineering.

For the past three weeks, 20 OSSM rising seniors participated in the Investigative Research Scholars Program (IRSP), a three-week offshoot of the mentorship program in which students conduct research in the labs of the OU Health Sciences Center and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF). The researchers helped explore solutions to cure pancreatic cancer and to create materials for animal research. The program ended Friday with a lunch that featured James. J. Tomasek, Ph.D., vice president for Research and the David Ross Boyd Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Dr. Tomasek linked the importance of “productive stupidity” to significant scientific discoveries. Each student then gave a brief description of the work they conducted during the program.

For more information on OSSM’s mentorship program, click here.