Alumni Stories
The Summer Residential Program hosts high school students who are interested in health, medicine, and science to share in the resources at a renowned university. But there is a crucial distinction in the program: it is for students who have experienced adversity – from poverty and war to violence and racial injustice.
Our book, Healing Journeys: Teaching Medicine, Nurturing Hope, presents the compelling life stories of 16 SMYSP alumni whose lives have been affected by hardship. Complementing their life stories are vignettes that allow readers to follow students as they gain hands-on experience in the anatomy lab, don hospital scrubs, hear lectures by Stanford faculty, and learn to live together in preparation for college.
Our film, Opportunity of a Lifetime, is a 30-minute documentary film capturing the energy of the SMYSP Summer Residential Program. From SAT prep classes to working in the morgue to salsa lessons, the film documents life-changing experiences for the 24 high school students from the 2004 program and their families. You can view a 10-minute clip and learn more about the film on our Opportunity of a Lifetime page.
The students in the book and movie come from different backgrounds, cultures and faiths, but the students find commonality in their dreams for a brighter future for themselves, their families and their communities.
Read the stories of these remarkable SMYSP alumni:
- Destinee Cooper – plans to return to the Montana Indian Reservation where she spent summers as a child after she finishes medical school. “That’s where my roots are,” she says.
- Kao Vang – “SMYSP
was one of the most enlightening things that could have happened to
me.”
- Juan Ibarra – "I identified with the people in the program in such a powerful way, in a way that was so much stronger than anything I had experienced before."
- Irene Linetskaya - "SMYSP helped me know specifically why I wanted to be a doctor and how medicine made sense in my life."