CERN Teacher and Student Programmes

CERN Teacher and Student Programmes

Margherita BOSELLI, Jeff WIENER

CERN, Geneva Switzerland

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is a scientific centre located in Geneva, Switzerland, with a unique particle accelerator infrastructure.

Training the future generation of scientists and engineering is recognized in the CERN Convention, and education programmes for high school students and teachers are part of this effort. Two flagship programmes are the Beamline for Schools competition and CERN’s Teacher Programmes.

Beamline for Schools invites international teams of high school students to propose an experiment that can be performed at the test beam facility of a particle accelerator. The winners are invited to spend two weeks in an international laboratory to perform their experiments with the support of a team of scientists. The participants have the unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in physics research and get in touch with professional scientists.

CERN’s Teacher Programmes are professional development programmes that enable in-service high school science teachers from all around the world to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in particle physics and related areas by experiencing a dynamic, international research environment. All teacher programmes are facilitated by experts in the field of physics, engineering, and computing and include an extensive lecture and visit itinerary. In addition to national teacher programmes, CERN offers two 2-week international teacher programmes: The International High School Teacher (HST) Programme and the International Teacher Weeks (ITW) Programme.