A glimpse of a perfect world, where highly diverse people come together, enjoy each other, share what's different about themselves, work hard, and move toward a common purpose. That's the characterization, apparently accurate as well as poetic, applied by a former co-director to the annual 5-week taste of a brighter future that goes by the prosaic name of Stanford Medical Youth Science Program (SMYSP).
Its goal is to facilitate the entry of academically talented, underserved, predominantly minority high school students into the health care professions.
The endeavor grew from a tutoring effort begun in 1987 by Mark Lawrence and Michael McCullough, undergraduates at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif, who were struck by the economic and social disparity between the rich academic community and its predominantly poor, crime-ridden neighbor, East Palo Alto. Undergraduates were recruited not only to help high school students in that largely black and Hispanic community with their studies, but to enlarge their view of the world and their place in it.
Aided from the beginning by co-founder Marilyn A. Winkleby, PhD, a senior research scientist/epidemiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine's Center for Research in Disease Prevention, undergraduates have developed a unique means of introducing the possibility of advanced education leading to professional careers to talented-but-poor young people in northern and central California.
Annual Summer Program
Each summer, 22 carefully chosen high school students, recruited through their schools are invited to come to Stanford from within a 200-mile radius of the campus that includes California's agricultural Central Valley as well as blighted inner-city areas.
The selection emphasis is a little different from what one might expect. While most of those who make the cut from a couple of hundred annual applicants are students with a B average or better, demonstrated ability in math and science, and financial need, there are also a few "high-risk" participants whose background may include lower grades, gang membership, or early motherhood. It's up to the program codirectors – a different male and female Stanford undergraduate each year – and Winkleby to decide whether intellectual potential and eagerness for a college opportunity are likely to override negative factors.
Once settled in the large SMYSP house (rented for one fourth of the group's annual budget) and led by enthusiastic student codirectors and counselors, the heterogeneous participants embark on a routine of work- and study-filled days, highlighted by field trips to scientific facilities and cultural and recreational activities. All is designed to encourage intercultural understanding while furthering the program's objectives.
Recently at Stanford, last year's co-directors Jenny Wash and Arash Anoshiravani, premedical seniors majoring in biology, and two former program participants who are also premedical students, junior Patricia Reynoso and senior Jesus Rodriguez, along with Winkleby, talked about the six objectives and provided some illustrations of how the fortunate 22 work toward their achievement.
To broaden underserved high school students' understanding of the health care field and to encourage their entry into related professions through exposure to hospital and research environments.
Two days each week, every program participant has an internship at Stanford University Hospital or the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto. "Over the years," says Jenny, "as the hospitals have grown to know the kind of students we have and gain trust in our program, they're given more and more responsible positions. We've had people helping in surgery, helping with autopsies in the morgue, working with patients in an HIV clinic." Physicians and other members of the hospital staffs have become mentors to students, who have also helped in return as medical translators.
To provide educational advancement in biological and medical sciences.
The students spend time doing research with Stanford University professors in chemistry and biology laboratories; some become their mentors.
And although they come fresh into the medical school's anatomy lab at an even younger age than medical students, the SMYSP people have high praise for anatomy instructor John Dolph. "He teaches anatomy to our high school students the same way he teaches it to med students," says Arash. "He'll give them a book and a section to work with, and afterward they have to explain everything they learned about that section of the body to the rest of the group."
Peer teaching as well as informal interaction with Stanford faculty wins high marks from all the program participants. "We emphasize the joy of learning and critical thinking," explains Jenny. "We don't have any tests or grades."
The night before scheduled faculty get-togethers – all the professors are volunteers, persuaded by program leaders to take part for the common good – students are given an idea of the subject and encouraged to think of relevant issues. "So," Jenny says, "when the professors come in, it's so enjoyable to be there without any pressure, to just be in the essence of learning. That spurs a lot of wonderful questions and discussion."
Arash says, "A lot of the students come from high schools where the teaching they experience is very different from what they see here. It's amazing for them to see that this is what teaching and going to school and learning can be like."
Winkleby points out that many of these students who were fish out of water in their home communities, beset by financial and other barriers to academic achievement, now find that they are among people just like themselves, poor but bright and eager to excel. According to her, they feel and even say, "It's so nice to let me be smart!"
To enhance students' writing, public speaking, and computer skills to facilitate their transition from high school to college.
Stanford University School of Medicine makes its extensive computer facilities available to SMYSP participants who know how to use them – and those who don't catch on fast, says Winkleby. "We've recognized," she says, "that this program can't have the sole goal of trying to prepare students for medical school. "It has to have a primary goal of helping them apply for undergraduate college and, especially, make it through that first year. So we include computers, learning effective public speaking, preparing the college admissions essay, finding financial aid, and mastering study skills and time management."
At program graduation, each student makes a short presentation about his or her 5-week research project, evidence of skills acquired during the summer.
To expose students to role models representing similar ethnic and cultural backgrounds who share similar goals.
Since more than 125 students representing more than 20 ethnic groups have taken part in the program since 1988, finding role models for each one might seem difficult. That wouldn't necessarily pose a problem at Stanford, with a faculty drawn from all over the world, but the fact is that all but 14% of the students are from three major groups: Chicano/Latino (30%), African American (25%), and Asian (31%). An equal number of young women and young men have participated. |
Several students have more exotic, sometimes tragic, backgrounds. Refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia have lived in the house as part of its "one big family," as have twin brothers from Afghanistan. The violence these young people knew found reflection in the life of a participant from Oakland, Calif, whose best friend was shot to death the day the student left for Palo Alto.
Entering into the spirit of the program was particularly hard for this young man, says Arash, "because he kept wondering why he should put his heart and soul into it if he's going to go back home to the same sort of thing. But he did turn himself around by the end of the program, and when I talked with him on the phone in late fall he was applying to college. He said that was one of the things that kept him going, he couldn't wait to get out of where he was."
"The one thing I have been adamant about," says Winkleby, "is targeting low-income students. In the 1980s, a lot of programs targeted ethnic minority students without attention to income background. That simply made those students more competed for, but it didn't expand the pool. What we're really trying to do is bring students into the health professions who have an understanding of the class and income concerns of the patients, because you could almost say it's not a great match to have an ethnic minority doctor who's been raised in Beverly Hills serving a very low-income population.
"What you would like is someone with an understanding of the patients' environment and barriers and social and cultural concerns. That, in a way, is the uniqueness of this program."
Jesus Rodriguez, a Stanford senior from the tiny central-California town of Madera, it's the description to a T. A high school cross-country runner and soccer player, he says, "I've always wanted to go into family medicine because when I grew up there were doctors around, but we couldn't afford them. And we didn't speak their language – or they didn't speak our language – so we just didn't see each other at all. To a big extent that still goes on in California."
"For me," says Jesus, who has just been accepted to medical school, "family medicine has always been a big priority. I know I'm not going to help everybody, but I'll at least influence some, and I'll make the suffering less for a couple of people."
To create student leaders who serve as role models in their schools and communities.
Patricia Reynoso, a Stanford junior from Union City, Calif, who "likes all of medicine, so I can't decide on a specialty yet," is president of the campus group Chicanos in Health Education. Finding the annual "premed conferences" held at local colleges "boring," Patricia says she "wanted to do something different, so I started Anatomy Day."
Enlisting anatomy instructor Dolph's assistance, she put together a day-long program. A speaker talked about the history of dissection (relating it to the Mexican Dia de los Muertos), then lunch was served, followed by an anatomically oriented study skills session and a 3-D slide show. After that, the group went into the anatomy lab where medical students from the University of California-San Francisco, University of California-Davis, and Stanford gave lectures on various parts of the anatomy.
Now that the SMYSP has been around for a while, role models are often students who have gone through it earlier and are now pursuing advanced studies. Winkleby says with justifiable pride that "100% of those students who are college age are attending a college or university." She keeps tabs on as many as she can, producing an annual directory and newsletter through which former program members keep in touch. There is also an informal but strong network of one-time SMYSP-ers in the academic world. Of those students who are currently enrolled in college, 20% attend Stanford and 52% attend schools that are part of the University of California system. Most are majoring in science and planning careers in medicine (although even if they opt out of medicine, they are encouraged to pursue higher education). Graduates of the 1988 program are beginning to be accepted to prestigious medical schools on full scholarships.
With evident feeling, Winkleby quotes one of these students, a Stanford graduate, who said, "When I was growing up, I worked in the fields with my mother and held other jobs. I was my high school valedictorian, with strong grades, but I did not know anything about college. I had never heard of Stanford or any other university."
To provide peer and family support to low-income students as they apply for and enter college.
Speaking during the interview at Stanford, Jesus and Patricia, both of whom appear to have been ideally well-rounded high school students as well as high achievers in college, talked about how difficult it was for their families to accept their putting so much emphasis on education and going away to school. Now, both say, their parents have told them how proud they are of them.
The difficulty in letting go is a common theme, says Winkleby, that the program tries to address from the beginning by inviting families to visit the campus and making it possible for them to talk with others whose children have sought a place in the wider world. Graduates of the program are encouraged to give talks in their high schools to acquaint other students with its possibilities and, says Winkleby, "to give presentations to civic groups in their communities to promote awareness of the program and encourage local financial support."
Keeping It Going
Money is crucial not only for every student in the SMYSP, but for its own continued existence. Participation is free of charge and includes tuition, room and board, and educational costs. The Stanford faculty and hospital staff donate their time, and the local community offers various resources. Still, says Winkleby, "funding presents an ongoing challenge." The program costs approximately $2600 per student – $58,000 per year.
Financial support so far has come primarily from the Stanford University Hospital Office of Community and Patient Relations, which gives $10,000 per year, and from the Lucile Packard and James Irvine foundations, both based in California.
But Winkleby worries. Funding is becoming more difficult to obtain. This summer, she will begin asking individuals, professional groups, and corporations to sponsor one SMYSP scholarship for five summers – a $15,000 contribution that will give five promising young people a chance to change their lives through education.
In addition to her university work, she herself devotes untold hours to fundraising as well as serving as the SMYSP's academic adviser. "I love this program," says Winkleby. "I really hope I can keep it going."
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