Canadian Light Source - Education Program

Education Program

The CLS has an education program - "Students on the Beamlines" - funded by NSERC Promoscience. This outreach program for science allows high school students to fully experience the work of a scientist, in addition to having the chance to use the CLS beamlines.

"The program allows students the development of active research, a very rare phenomena in schools and provides direct access to the use of a particle accelerator, something even rarer!" said teacher Steve Desfosses form College Saint-Bernard, Drummondville, Quebec.

Dene students from La Loche, Saskatchewan have taken part in this program twice, looking at effects of acid rain. Student Jontae DesRoches commented “Elders have noticed that the landscape, where trees used to grow, there’s none growing anymore. They’re pretty concerned because wildlife is disappearing. Like, here there used to be rabbits and now there’s none”. In May 2012 three student groups were at the CLS simultaneously, with the La Loche students as the first to use the IDEAS beamline.

“The aim for the students,” according to CLS education and outreach coordinator Tracy Walker, “is to get an authentic scientific inquiry that’s different from the examples in textbooks that have been done thousands of times.” Students from six provinces as well as the Northwest Territories have been directly involved in experiments, some of which have yielded publishable-quality research.

In 2012 the CLS was awarded the Canadian Nuclear Society's Education and Communication Award "in recognition of its commitment to community outreach, increasing public awareness of synchrotron science, and developing innovative and outstanding secondary educational programs such as Students on the Beamlines".