Conducting Particle Physics Research with High School Students

Thanks to widespread media exposure, high school students are often very interested in particle physics. However, many students have to wait until college or even graduate school to study and do research in particle physics. But much of particle physics research involves writing and debugging software, creating histograms, and calculating efficiencies - all tasks that are possible for a talented high school student. This talk will describe a program in which high school students work together to complete a particle physics analysis. It will go over the highs, lows, and take-aways, and argue that similar programs are both possible and rewarding for researchers in any field who have the time to invest in these students.