DAYBREAK - UCSF May Be in Their Future

This page is in an archival section of the web site; the information may be outdated.
For current content, please visit UCSF Today at http://www.ucsf.edu/today/

Today's
Headlines

This Week's
News

1st appeared 19 August 1999

UCSF May Be in Their Future

Seventeen-year-old Sandra Reyes will go back to school next week enriched with a summer’s worth of valuable knowledge and a new goal: in five years she wants to be starting school at UCSF.

Wendy Wu The Mission High senior decided that she wants to be a dentist, preferably in the SF Mission District community where she lives. Her ambition is not too lofty, she insists. Her role models -- students and faculty at UCSF -- are living and working proof that such a career is attainable.

"I’m going to work hard this year, get into a good college -- hopefully a UC campus -- and be back here some day," she says with new-found confidence.

Reyes was one of 34 high school juniors and seniors to complete UCSF’s Health Science Enrichment Program, an intensive six weeks in classrooms and clinics. The outreach program targets disadvantaged students in the Bay Area who have the motivation and potential to pursue a career in the health sciences.

"Research has demonstrated that health care professionals from underrepresented minority communities are more likely to serve the needs of the community upon graduation from health professions schools," says Charles Alexander, assistant dean in the School of Dentistry and director of the program.

Launched this summer, the Health Science Enrichment Program is a partnership with San Francisco high schools and the University of San Francisco, which offered its classrooms for math and sciences sessions in the mornings and housed the youngsters in its dormitories at night. The program is part of an expanded University of California-wide effort to increase its outreach to pre-college students in the community.

The six weeks, however, were more than an extended show-and-tell. It tested the mettle of even the brightest youngsters and gave them a true glimpse of the rigors of college life. The students all completed and received credit for two college prep or advanced placement courses, such as chemistry and trigonometry -- classes that normally take a whole school year to finish. In the afternoons, they were shuttled to UCSF where they became familiar with the work of dentists, nurses, pharmacists, physicians, physical therapists and laboratory scientists. They also participated in sessions on selecting a college, writing personal statements, study and verbal skills development, and building self-esteem. Each of the students were divided into groups to research a disease -- diabetes, cervical cancer, emphysema and scoliosis were the topics -- and they presented findings to their peers in what served as sort of an oral final exam. The summer session was at times grueling, but the only complaints from the high schoolers were the early dorm curfew and not being able to play their stereos and radios a bit louder.

During the six weeks, the 34 students were mentored and chaperoned by adults who became their role models, including a group of SF school district math and science instructors; Charles Alexander; Bilal Shabazz, the program’s assistant director and a longtime outreach advocate at UCSF; Prescilla Bradshaw, a dentist and student recruitment specialist in the School of Dentistry; UCSF students Fred Gray, Maria Lopez, LaQuia Walker and Edward Wiggins; and USF student Kathrine Vo. And at a spirited and sometimes emotional closing ceremony attended by UCSF and SF school district officials, parents and friends, the youngsters received their "graduation" certificates.

Clifford Attkisson, dean of the UCSF Graduate Division and a vice chancellor for student academic affairs, addressed the students at the ceremony and urged them to be role models at their own high schools and eventually become students and graduates of a UC campus. He noted that UCSF also hosted a 10-week summer residency program for promising college students with an interest in the health and biological sciences, and next year’s high school program may be expanded to include more participants. In addition, future outreach may extend as far as middle and elementary school students.

Convincing the students to attend UC was easy. Wendy Wu, a Mission High senior who was selected the program’s outstanding student, hopes to turn her love of children into a career in pediatric nursing. She will apply to UC Irvine this year, and she does envision herself working, or attending graduate school, at UCSF.

Shandon Massey Herlinda Tin, a senior at Thurgood Marshall High in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point area, enjoyed the sessions in the School of Dentistry where they implanted fillings in life-sized models of teeth and X-rayed a mannequin. But the discussions of the many options in dentistry -- oral medicine, orthodontics and pediatric dentistry, to name a few -- convinced her that this is the field to pursue.

Michael McDonald of Skyline High in Oakland intends to beef up his 3.83 GPA and apply to UCLA. He’s eyeing a career in sports medicine, because he likes athletics and "you can make $150,000 a year."

Shandon Massey says, "I can see myself doing something in the health sciences." But the Thurgood Marshall High student will take it one year at time, and first take the momentum from the summer session and blast through his senior year with high marks. He hopes to be at UCLA next fall.

These are more than dreams, says Prescilla Bradshaw of the School of Dentistry, which conducted a two-week summer outreach last year. All five high school seniors who participated last year are enrolling in a four-year university this fall -- one is going to SF State, one to UC San Diego, two to UCLA, and one to Columbia University.

Of this year’s group, she says, "They’re terrific kids. I can see some of them back here in a few years."

Links:

UCSF School of Dentistry