http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/12/real-kids-real.html

Real kids, real research
A handful of high school programs show that American students can become top scientists - if given the chance

By Laura Vanderkam

Like most kids, Ariel Bowers grew up fascinated with the stars and planets.
Unlike most young people, though, Bowers, 17, is well on her way to making a
career out of her fascination. She spends many hours each week at the local
Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, studying areas of the cosmos
that have only recently been photographed with modern telescopes.

(Web Bryant / USA TODAY)

"Lewis and Clark went out there and catalogued what they saw - that's
pretty much what I'm doing," she says. That means crunching data, writing papers
about her findings - in short, just how real researchers spend their time.

It's an impressive start to a scientific career. But it's not unusual for
students in Baltimore's Ingenuity Project, a program started in 1993 to make
students "nationally competitive" in the science scene, says Dolores Costello,
the program's director. It's working. Bowers, for instance, has helped to write
two successful proposals for time on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three Ingenuity
students have placed in the top 10 in the Intel Science Talent Search since
2005. "Our children are underestimated," Costello says. "There are many talented
students in the public schools."

She's right. Unfortunately, judging by the low percentage of American-born
scientists in the nation's Ph.D. programs, most schools do a lousy job of
nurturing these bright children. But a handful of schools, including Bowers'
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, manage to dominate national competitions
through carefully crafted research programs, which give students the time, the
skills and the support necessary to do graduate-level projects before they're
old enough to vote. Such programs require a huge commitment from students, their
teachers and their schools. But if the U.S. is going to stay scientifically
competitive, more school systems should give them a whirl.

The winning recipe

Writing about education can get depressing, but there's nothing like meeting the
winners of national competitions to renew your faith in what young people can
do. The recipients of this year's Davidson Fellows Scholarships (sponsored by
the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, an organization based in Reno I
consult for) include a 17-year-old who developed a method for producing methane
in microbial fuel cells and another 17-year-old who investigated a potential new
drug target site for HIV.

I write a weekly online column for Scientific American that profiles former
finalists in the old Westinghouse Science Talent Search(which later became the
Intel Science Talent Search). These projects likewise run the gamut from number
theory proofs to cancer advances. As I look through the diverse lists of
winners, though, it's hard not to notice the same high school names repeating
like the letters A, C, G and T in a DNA sequence: The Bronx High School of
Science, Ward Melville and John F. Kennedy high schools on Long Island, the
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academyin Aurora, and a few others.

It turns out that, while plenty of students undertake big research projects on
their own, schools can smooth the way. The Ingenuity Project in Baltimore, for
instance, identifies high achievers in middle school and tracks them into
accelerated math classes (many taught, in high school, by teachers with math
Ph.D.s). Starting in 10th grade, research teacher David Nelson helps students
hash through the scientific literature to choose topics, then helps them find
mentors at Johns Hopkins and other local institutions. Students such as Bowers
must clock 120 hours in labs over the summer, and seven to 10 hours a week
during the school year, a task the program makes possible by scheduling the
research class for the last two periods of each weekday (so students can go
visit their mentors and run longer experiments if necessary).

This isn't a secret process. Indeed, Barbi Frank, a Long Island biology teacher
whose John F. Kennedy High School research program has produced several Intel
semifinalists, recently launched a curriculum called SMARTK12 that other schools
can use to replicate her program.

Thinking like scientists

Yet making top-notch science training a priority is difficult for schools
focused on bringing low-achievers up to grade level. It's also not politically
correct to separate out bright students and lavish resources on them.

That's an unfortunate mindset. Scientific progress is seldom made by
middle-of-the-pack types. It's also crucial in a high-tech economy. For that
reason, Frank doesn't worry that if other schools adopt her methods, her kids
will face stiffer competition. "We need more scientists," she says. Many of her
students major in science. But even if they don't, "we need people thinking like
mathematicians, engineers and scientists, and this program is training them at a
young age to think that way."

Take Brian Tannenbaum, one of Frank's former students. He researched a link
between breast cancer genes and colon cancer all through high school. He is now
a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is majoring in
economics. He finds writing papers quite doable after Frank put his project
explanations through "hundreds of drafts." Internships aren't intimidating after
he learned to interact with adults as a fellow researcher. "You learn how to
think on your feet," Tannenbaum says. "You learn how to take criticism." Most
important, he learned how to work - not for a grade - but in pursuit
of a result that he was by no means guaranteed of getting. "Really, for the
first time, I was working for myself," he says. "The beauty of it is that no
matter what field you enter, you're prepared."

Too bad more kids can't say the same thing.

Laura Vanderkam, author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying
Your Dues, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Posted at 12:17 AM/ET, December 10, 2008 in Education - Forum, Forum commentary
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