A primary concern about the future of science and technology in the United States is the lack of interest at the secondary school level. In many instances, this perceived lack of interest may be related to an inability to conceptualize what a research scientist does. In addition, at many smaller colleges and universities, there is a lack of graduate students to perform publication quality research. Both of these issues may be addressed by utilizing secondary and undergraduate researchers. In the first instance, we have successfully utilized secondary school students to fabricate and characterize microfluidic devices in glass substrates. The techniques that the students have developed may be easily adopted by other institutions and are inexpensive and leave a minimal environmental footprint. In the second case, an undergraduate researcher has extensively studied the modification of polycarbonate by excimer radiation and its application to electroosmotic flow. In both instances, projects are performed using 10 - 15 hours a week. This is achieved by breaking larger projects into smaller bite size chunks that may be passed from one researcher to another and recognizing that the lack of formal academic training does not limit one in the laboratory. In addition, the principal investigator must treat young researchers as contemporaries, so as to allow them the opportunity to achieve their research potential. In many instances, such researchers are as or more productive than graduate researchers. Such an approach provides an opportunity for students to experience the laboratory environment and allows researchers to achieve publication quality results.