Stones and Bones gives you a unique opportunity to participate in a four-week intensive practicum in paleontology in Chicago and Wyoming, carried out by The Field Museum. You will work at labs, take part in an ongoing expedition, analyze your discoveries and acquire the fundamental scientific background in one of the finest natural history museums in the world.

Credit

Residential

Accepts International Students

Financial Aid

Paleontology Program for High School Students
Join the Field Museum’s Distinguished Service Curator, Lance Grande, for a four-week intensive practicum in paleontology in Chicago and Wyoming. Go into the field and behind the scenes at the Field Museum to learn how fossils are collected, analyzed, and conserved, as you work alongside museum scientists in the lab and in the field.

In Chicago, Dr. Grande and other Field Museum scientists will take you into the labs and galleries where they work and study as they introduce you to important concepts in geology, paleontological methods, stratigraphy, and earth history. You will also learn about basic techniques for the study of evolutionary biology including comparative skeletal anatomy of fishes and other freshwater animals. You will examine methodological concepts such as fossil preparation, illustration, and description. Through this, you will acquire the fundamental scientific background needed to discover and understand the significance of fossils in the field.

In Wyoming, you will experience what life in the field is all about when you join the ongoing Field Museum expedition in the Green River Formation. This site is one of the world's most productive fossil sites and contains an entire 52 million-year-old community of extinct organisms.

Previous expeditions to the Green River Formation have led Grande and his team to uncover thousands of fossils, including plants, insects, mammals, crocodiles, birds, lizards, turtles, and fishes, many of which are currently on display at the museum.

Spend your mornings and late afternoon digging for fossils from the Cenozoic Period and interpret them in a way that allows you to incorporate fossils into studies of living animals and plants. In the early afternoon and evenings, you can go into town for provisions, help prepare meals for your fellow diggers, and sit around the campfire with the museum's researchers and their families. When you return to Chicago, you will conserve, catalog, and analyze your new discoveries in the museum's preparation labs, using the same techniques and equipment that the museum's own staff uses.

The Field Museum is considered one of the finest natural history museums in the world, with top-notch collections and a strong research team. The museum exhibits a wide range of prehistoric life, from dinosaurs like the famous T.Rex., "Sue," to early mammals, birds, and fish. It is one of the few museums in the world to maintain regular fossil-hunting expeditions in search of prehistoric remains. Stones and Bones gives you a unique opportunity to participate in the paleontological study carried out by the museum.

Course Description
Study basic geology (including rocks and minerals, stratigraphy, earth history, and mapping skills), evolutionary biology (including comparative skeletal anatomy of fishes and other freshwater animals, large-scale evolutionary patterns of these animals, and how the 50-million-year-old ecosystem of the Fossil Lake Range was established and functioned), and methods of specimen-based research. This course provides the fundamental scientific background needed to discover and understand the meaning of fossils as they are preserved, and gives students the opportunity to gain actual field experience. Students go “behind the scenes” at the Field Museum to examine previously collected fossils and learn how to prepare, conserve, and analyze specimens.

Regular class attendance, timely completion of work, and participation are required. Failure to meet these standards may result in probation or dismissal. Students in Immersion, RIBS, and Stones & Bones, are required to take all classes for a quality letter grade and missing more than a day will have a significant impact on your grade for the class. Each Summer Session course is equivalent to 9 weeks of undergraduate coursework. Because Summer courses are condensed, 1-2 days of class is equivalent to an entire week of instruction during the regular academic year, so attendance and timely completion of work is critical. Summer Session courses and grades are recorded on a UChicago transcript; college applications, including the Common App, will require you to submit this transcript when you apply to colleges.
Course times: 10:00 A.M - 4:00 P.M.
Units: 200 UChicago units, which is equivalent to 2 full-time courses.

The University of Chicago: Stones and Bones

Jun 12 - Jul 07

4 weeks

Residential

13600 USD

Cost includes housing and dining.

Students admitted to any Multi-Week Program must confirm attendance by submitting a $1,000 non-refundable program deposit within seven days of the release of their admissions decision. Students will not be registered for courses or programs until this initial deposit is received. Students admitted to any Scholarship Program will have the enrollment deposit automatically waived.

The full program fee will be due four weeks after students are admitted; students who fail to pay the program fee will forfeit their spot in their program.

Application fees and the enrollment deposit are nonrefundable.

Financial Aid

High school students are eligible for a number of scholarships and aid.

Need-based aid
UChicago offers need-based aid to students interested in participating in Summer College.

In order to be considered for need-based aid to support students with demonstrated financial need, students must complete the additional information requested in the application.

Aid varies based on need and program cost; students typically receive between the following amounts: $5,000 - $9,000.

UChicago Scholarship Programs
In addition to this aid, UChicago also hosts scholarship programs for rural students, students engaged in Hispanic/Latino communities, students who identify as Black/African American, students whose parents are police officers or firefighters, and students who are currently enrolled in any of the United World Colleges, to provide enhanced financial, academic, and social support in our Summer College programs.

Students selected for each of the scholarship programs will be able to participate in a Summer College course free of charge. All costs will be covered by the scholarship

The application fee will be waived for anyone applying to a scholarship program.

External Scholarships
Students who apply through external scholarship partners will have varied scholarship opportunities and will not have to pay an application fee or submit a Financial Aid Application.