Five students from Monticello High School, accompanied by science teacher Joseph Woolsey, attended the 2016 Wisconsin Rural Summer Science Camp, held at the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison.

Now in its 10th year, the camp offers high school juniors from small districts around Wisconsin the unprecedented chance to work with leading stem cell scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and learn how this field is transforming human health. Many students from past camps have gone on to promising science careers.  This program focuses on small rural schools, many of which have limited resources that keep them from going in-depth on science topics.

The complete group attending from Monticello on July 25-28 included Kyle Walters, Samantha Winters, Chandler Hansen, Karlene Walters and Holly Bak.

The Morgridge Institute for Research, a private, nonprofit biomedical research institute affiliated with UW–Madison, runs the camp with the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance. The camp not only gives students a taste for science and college, but teachers also get to pick up new information alongside their students.  The endowment was established to support the program in 2011 by the family of Kathleen Smith, a former trustee of both the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the Morgridge Institute.