Faculty Positions

“the teaching opportunity of a lifetime”

No ordinary summer job … the Summer Science Program is a unique opportunity to teach and mentor some of the most promising STEM students of their cohort in the world.

To work at SSP is to join a team of seven, leading 36 amazing young people through an intense and fully immersive university-level research project for six weeks. Living and working together on a university campus, you will dive into hands-on science in a supportive and close-knit community. It’s an experience that can’t be thoroughly captured in a written job description. It’s gratifying and fulfilling, but as with other unusually rewarding experiences in life, also challenging … and sometimes exhausting. 

Compensation includes salary and all meals. For faculty not local to the assigned campus, we provide housing and travel. (While we try to accommodate family members and pets, our ability to do so is limited,)

"There is a beautiful freedom in working with talented students in the absence of grades or other distractions. Not being expected to know all the answers makes them willing to guess creatively and question how we know what we know. It is a joy to work with young people who are so excited to find experts who can answer their questions!"

"One of the things that drew me to SSP was seeing firsthand how everyone involved cares enough about each other to listen to understand, rather than just listening to respond, and that means a lot."

Register for an upcoming summer employment webinar

(register for one, the content will be the same both sessions)

Full-time Summer Positions in Astrophysics, Biochemistry and Genomics

We are now accepting applications for all positions for 2024.

2024 Dates and Campuses

In 2024, SSP plans to operate at least six programs on five campuses, possibly more.  Dates for the 2024 programs are TBD but typically run from early June through the last week in July. In 2023 we operated the following programs:

Astrophysics
  • Univ. of North Carolina Chapel Hill   
  • Univ. of Colorado Boulder
  • New Mexico State Univ.
Biochemistry
  • Indiana Univ.
  • Purdue Univ.
Genomics
  • Indiana Univ.

Teaching at SSP

Since 1959, hundreds of scientists have been associated with SSP as a student, faculty, or both, including George Abell (UCLA), Edmund Bertschinger (MIT), Ronald Irving (Univ. of Washington), Ed Krupp (Griffith Observatory), Jerry Nelson (UC Santa Cruz), Douglas Richstone (Univ. of Michigan), Thomas Steiman-Cameron (Indiana Univ.), Elizabeth Simmons (UC San Diego), Nicholas Suntzeff (Texas A&M), Robert Tarjan (Princeton), Alma Zook (Pomona), and many more.

Dr. Adam Rengstorf teaching gravity

"SSP has been a refreshing and satisfying teaching experience, working with some of the brightest young scientific minds out there! Their level of enthusiasm, curiosity, and engagement surpasses anything I have experienced teaching undergraduate college courses."

"My summers with SSP were some of the best of my life, and I'm incredibly thankful to have had the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing program not once, but twice."

“As an educator, it was my privilege to interact with such motivated, driven and capable participants. It is indeed the experience of a lifetime not just for the participants but also for the faculty.”