PML Outreach Promotes STEM Excitement

Michael Postek of PML's Semiconductor & Dimensional Metrology Division has been an instrumental part of an outreach to bring access to tabletop scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) to students. PML has teamed with the Food and Drug Administration's Forensic Chemistry Center, the University of Maryland, and Hitachi High Technologies to bring teachers, students, and SEM manufacturers together to offer SEM training and hands-on usage as a part of the annual SPIE Scanning Microscopies Conference.

This half-day educational workshop has been held for the past three years. In this year's workshop, success stories were shared from several of the teachers who had incorporated desktop SEM usage into their curriculums. The consensus was not only that the students were excited about this new learning opportunities, but that test scores also improved. This aligns with NIST's commitment to creating a world-class workforce that is trained for careers in academia or industry. Additional successes are detailed in Postek's article "Microscopy Curriculum Stimulates STEM Excitement."