Knauss legislative fellowships in Congress help build careers — and they're fun and educational. See our video and fact sheet for details.
Career Lab Summer Program
Career Lab: Sustainable Food Systems
This five-week training program introduces Baltimore City high school students to aquaculture and sustainable food production. The Career Lab’s hands-on experiences reflect best practices in youth education and workforce development. Students explore advanced STEM concepts, while gaining professional skills. This program is a partnership between Maryland Sea Grant, Fishnet restaurant, and Baltimore City YouthWorks.
The summer 2025 pilot program led seven students through programming in classrooms, research labs, farms, and the Chesapeake Bay. Read about their experiences in Chesapeake Quarterly magazine.
Support the 2026 Career Lab Program
Help our 2026 program to build on last year's success. Donate today! Your donation directly supports transportation, materials, meals, and hands-on learning for Baltimore City students. From our donation page, select the "Workforce Development in Secondary Education" designation.
Program Supporters
The following organizations supported the 2025 Career Lab as host sites, educators, financial supporters, and more. Thank you!
- Baltimore City YouthWorks
- Baltimore Museum of Industry
- Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
- Center for Sustainable Living
- Coastal Conservation Association
- Fishnet Restaurant
- Francis Scott Key High School
- Freedom Boat Club
- Great Kids Farm
- Green Street Academy
- Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology
- Maryland Sea Grant
- The National Aquarium
- South Carroll High School
- Western School of Technology
In 2025, this program was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (award #2021-68012-35922).
Program Announcements
News and Blogs
Featured Fellow
Nina Santos
Nina Santos is a Ph.D. student at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. For her dissertation, she is focused on small shrimp-like crustaceans called mysids – an understudied yet important part of many estuarine and coastal food webs.
Featured Research Project
Developing a habitat model for mysids, an important link in Chesapeake Bay food webs
Mysids are important mesozooplankton prey for many species of fish in Chesapeake Bay and are an important link in transferring energy from lower to upper trophic levels. Mysids also serve as biological vectors for benthic-pelagic coupling due to their diel vertical migration and omnivorous prey-switching behavior, which makes mysids important regulators of food web architecture. Despite their central role in coastal food webs, surprisingly little is known about mysid ecology and dynamics in Chesapeake Bay.
