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CORVALLIS, Ore. -- More than 100 middle school students from four Willamette Valley schools will meet at Oregon State University on Thursday, May 18, to present their scientific research on Apoidea, the insect group commonly called bees.

The OSU-K12 Discovering Partners in Nature Conference will put students from Halsey, Falls City, Inavale and Lebanon on stage with OSU professors to talk about the pollination habits of the fuzzy insects and the role their work plays in nature.

"Initially the classes were studying different bees and plants, then they started collecting bees in traps, finally they began looking at pollen collected by the bees through the scanning electron microscope on campus and drawing a map between the pollen on the bees and the flowers that it came from," said Sujaya Rao, an entomologist in the College of Agricultural Sciences.

"Their research is an important part of the wider university research," Rao said. "This is a chance for the students to show their findings in front of their teachers, peers and members of the university."

The conference is part of OSU's Rural Science Education Program sponsored by the Toshiba America Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Rao started the program in 2002 as a partnership between OSU and the state's rural school districts.

The program is based on sending university students into Oregon K-12 rural schools to teach science. Each year, 12 fellowships are awarded to undergraduate and graduate students in OSU's colleges of science and agricultural sciences. Over the course of the school year, these fellows create lesson plans, lead experiments and share their knowledge of cutting edge science with the rural students and teachers.

"We want the rural students to see the university as somewhere they could go and be successful," said Rao, who is also an associate professor with her own research on campus. "When they see real people in their classrooms who are scientists, it opens the door for them to think 'I can be a scientist, too.'"

At first the program had a focus on the natural sciences, but it expanded into DNA and genetic research when the Toshiba America Foundation awarded a grant for the integration of biotechnology studies, the first grant the organization had ever given directly to a university. The program has since received another grant from the foundation for the bee project.

The Discovering Partners in Nature Conference will run from 9 to 11 a.m. in the Construction and Engineering Hall of the LaSells Stewart Center on the OSU campus. For more information, contact Rao at 541-737-9038, or sujaya@oregonstate.edu.