Julie Kurth, Communication Manager
(480) 727-9386 | julie.kurth@asu.edu
July 17, 2008
Local teachers and students participate in Arizona’s largest summer high school bioscience internship program
While many of their peers were off enjoying summer holiday, 58 talented and dedicated Valley high school students and teachers engaged in solving real-world problems alongside Biodesign Institute scientists as part of Arizona’s largest high school bioscience internship program at Arizona State University.
At the Biodesign Institute, students, teachers and research mentors are participating in Arizona’s largest bioscience high school internship program this summer.
In all, 24 high schools in 14 districts with existing or emerging biotechnology programs were each invited to send a teacher to participate in the internship program. The teachers, in turn, helped select students for the paid six-week internship. Among the participating teachers were three from the Teach for America initiative, the nation's largest provider of teachers for low-income communities. (Editor’s note: Map attached showing participating high schools with bioscience programs.)
Now in its third year, the Biodesign Institute High School Internship program’s expanded scope was made possible through a $50,000 grant from the ASU Foundation’s Women and Philanthropy program.
“By including teachers for the first time in our internship program, we are helping them introduce more students to potential bioscience careers than ever before, with a potential impact on more than 4,000 Arizona high school students in the coming academic year,” said Richard Fisher, Biodesign Institute director of Educational Outreach. “The timing couldn’t have been better. As more Arizona high schools develop biotechnology programs, teachers can use their Biodesign experience to bolster their expertise and curriculum development.”
“Introducing science concepts to students this early will reap a lot of rewards for building a brain-based industry like biotechnology,” said Ben Perodeau, a biology teacher from Tolleson Union’s University High School.
Each student/teacher team worked on a research project tackling a pressing societal problem, ranging from decontamination of groundwater to building nanostructures for diagnostics or working on cures for infectious diseases and cancer. Perodeau and his student partner, upcoming junior Dulce Gomez, spent their internship with a Biodesign research team that is developing a vaccine against the disease tularemia, which is a potential biothreat against which no effective vaccine currently exists.
The challenging work is motivating 16-year-old Gomez to take a 90-minute bus ride to and from Tolleson each day. “I’ve always loved science, although sometimes the work can be a little difficult to explain to my parents.”
Each student/teacher pair was mentored by a Biodesign researcher who supervised their day-to-day progress.
The daily exposure to the large research teams and world-class facilities of the institute gave the interns an in-depth introduction to the career of a research scientist.
Biology teacher Michelle Landreville from the Mesa High School Biotech Academy marveled at the pace of innovation and discovery. “We didn’t even extract DNA when I was in college, so this is all new to me,” said Landreville. “The Biodesign Institute is a very stimulating environment where everyone encourages you to think out of the box.”
For upcoming senior Jennifer Lino of La Joya Community High School, the opportunity to investigate the causes of esophageal cancer had a very special, personal motivation. “My father had throat surgery [for cancer] when I was a little kid. Now he breathes through a tube in his throat,” she explained. “I hope that someday nobody else will have to go through his struggle.”
Participants in the summer internship program include:
| High School | Student | Teacher |
| Arcadia | Timothy Rayes | Eric Bodznick |
| Arcadia | Kelly Zucker | Cheryl Dunham |
| Basha | Richard Young | Sharon New |
| Bioscience | Lea Murray | |
| Buckeye Union | Andrea Medina | Elizabeth Dye |
| Buckeye Union | Maria Alvarado | Joseph Wilson |
| Corona del Sol | Katherine Cai | Lynnette Chapman |
| Desert Edge | Minwha Lee | Stuart Charlip |
| Desert Vista | Amy Zou | Birgit Musheno |
| Desert Vista | Daniel Chou | Crystal Roller |
| Dobson | Craig Wolc | Hope Finzer |
| Hamilton | Shemonti Hasan | Teresa Clark |
| Higley | Varendra Silva | Patricia Jones |
| La Joya Community | Jennifer Lino | Lindsey Boldt |
| Marcos de Niza | Parker Abel | Cheri Kinney |
| Marcos de Niza | Lauren Johnston | Michael Lee |
| McClintock | Lyndsey Edgerton | Stephanie King |
| Mesa | Matthew Pastor | Amanda Grimes |
| Mesa | Tyler Jensen | Michelle Landreville |
| Moon Valley | Amber Hollenbeck | Amanda Attryde |
| Mountain View | Mason Fleetwood | Thao Nguyen |
| North | Sandra Pogarcic | Fe Dumapias |
| Paradise Valley | Chantal McWhirter | April White |
| Phoenix Country Day School | Alexander Beller | Catherine Smith |
| Red Mountain | Jenna Schulte | Patricia Kupferer |
| Salt River | Anne English | |
| Shadow Mountain | Tom Boundy | Katon Kras |
| Sunrise Mountain | Joshua Bruner | Vicki Rosmann |
| University at Tolleson Union | Luis Laitano | Zach Ortiz |
| University at Tolleson Union | Dulce Gomez | Ben Perodeau |
To help jumpstart bioscience education, high school biotech programs throughout the Valley sent student/teacher pairs for a six-week paid internship at the Biodesign Institute.
Photos of student/teacher/mentor teams are available upon request.
