Young Scholars get a taste of college life
UC Davis professor Grace Rosenquist has high praise for the high school students who enter the six-week-long Young Scholars Program held on campus each summer.
The program, which dates back to at least the early 1960s, pairs up high school juniors and seniors with UCD researchers to work one-on-one with them in their labs.
And these students, says Rosenquist, “are all very intelligent, very enthusiastic and, most importantly, very conscientious.”
Not to mention, says the assistant adjunct professor who’s been at UCD since 1975, “they are very fun to work with.”
“There is a certain joy that they have … They really want to accomplish something here,” she says.
Perhaps that’s why Rosenquist has taken one or more YSP students under her wing every year for a decade, bringing them into her world of research, which for the past 20 years has included a focus on tyrosine sulfation — research that could end up helping pharmaceutical companies in drug development.
A total of 40 students enter YSP every summer, drawn from an applicant pool of nearly 350 high-achieving high school students from across the country and even around the world.
The program, run by the UCD School of Education, is very selective, notes director Rick Pomeroy, “but we’re not just looking for students with specific GPAs, or students who have taken specific classes.”
“We’re looking for students with a desire to do this, an ability to do the level of work here, and a passion for science,” he said.
Incoming Davis High School senior John Louie certainly fits that mold.
Louie applied for the program after his sophomore year of high school and was not accepted — certainly not uncommon, Pomeroy said.
But Louie stayed in contact with Rosenquist, and ended up meeting with her occasionally throughout the following school year, doing some research along the way.
When it came time to apply for the program a second time around, Louie not only got in, but Rosenquist specifically asked that he be placed with her.
“He has the foundation,” she noted. “He’s done so much more work than the average student. You have to read so much, know what you’re looking for, be able to interpret it. The fact that he can do it indicates what kind of student he is.”
That’s not to say she makes it easy.
“I try to treat them like graduate students,” Rosenquist said of her YSP students. “You can push high school students really hard.”
For his part, Louie says the program definitely challenges students. During the first two weeks of the session, participants attend daily morning lectures and are later tested on what they’ve learned.
The lectures, Louie said, were definitely aimed more at graduate students than high school students.
Still, they were interesting, said fellow DHS senior Richard Chew, the only other Davis student in the program this year.
“I’ve gotten a lot of knowledge out of this,” said Chew, who has spent much of his time with post doc Li Liu in Steven Theg’s laboratory on campus, working on research related to photosynthesis in tobacco plants.
“My personal role is to genotype the plants,” he explained. “I genotype them to control for any genetic variations.”
And as much as he’s enjoyed the work and the program itself, he says it’s also changed his outlook and possibly his future plans.
“I used to think I was not interested in life sciences,” Chew said. “But now I can see myself working on this kind of research. So it kind of opened a door I had closed.”
Louie, too, expects the program may help make his future plans clearer. He says he enjoys the humanities — music and the arts — but feels his real forte is in the sciences and mathematics.
“It’s hard to decide what you want to do,” Louie notes. “This program, hopefully, will help clear that up for me.”
Louie and Chew, along with the 38 other students, don’t spend all their time focused solely on research. They live in dorms on campus and enjoy field trips on weekends. Last weekend was a trip to Donner Summit, and previous outings included a trip to Bodega Bay.
Halfway through the six-week program, both give it high marks.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Chew said.
To learn more about the program, visit http://education.ucdavis.edu/projects-outreach/young-scholars-program.
— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at aternus@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8051.
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=62162
Posted by Anne Ternus-Bellamy
on Jul 11 2011.
Last Login: Wed 22 Feb 2012 05:16:44 PM PST
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