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By KATE RAMSAYER Kelly DeLaTorre and Lia Gracey will be the first in their families to graduate from college, but neither wants to stop there. DeLaTorre, who will graduate from UC-Santa Cruz next spring, and Gracey, who will be a senior at Northwestern University, are participating in the Stanford Summer Research Program to help prepare them for graduate school and beyond. They have joined 20 other undergrads working on research projects in labs at the medical school. For eight weeks, they conduct experiments, attend workshops and help sessions, and take field trips. Started in 1993, the program was designed to expose students with diverse backgrounds and life experiences to research at Stanford and to encourage them to apply, said program director Kimberly Griffin. “We’d like to see it be more of a direct pipeline to the Stanford PhD program,” she said. That sounds good to DeLaTorre. He’s applying to graduate programs in the fall and Stanford is on the list. “I wanted to get a taste of the Stanford lifestyle the facilities, the people,” he said. That’s what he’s doing in the lab of Man-Wah Tan, PhD, in the genetics department, working with microscopic worms to help identify players in the immune response to pathogens. At Santa Cruz, DeLaTorre is involved with a program called minority access to research careers, or MARC, which funds the Stanford research program along with the office of graduate education and the developmental biology and immunology programs. Through MARC, DeLaTorre participates in workshops, tutors students, presents his work and has traveled to scientific conferences in San Diego and New Orleans. DeLaTorre grew up in San Jose in a Mexican-American family and always had an interest in science; he wanted to be able to “answer questions that pertained to everyday life.” He hopes his two younger brothers follow in his footsteps and attend college. DeLaTorre transferred to Santa Cruz after attending De Anza College in Cupertino for three years and was planning on medical school before chemistry research changed his mind. This summer has opened doors for biology research as well. “I’m thankful that I was given this opportunity,” he said. Lia Gracey is also getting a chance to investigate different scientific questions this summer and is enjoying the opportunity to check out life on the West Coast. She is from a town in Iowa where she remembers being one of fewer than 10 Asian-Americans in a school of 1,200 students. Gracey was determined to go to Northwestern, financing it by applying for various private scholarships. Unlike DeLaTorre, Gracey wasn’t originally smitten by science. She entered college with plans to major in international relations or history. Organic chemistry class changed that she enjoyed the challenge and so decided to major in chemistry with a focus on biochemistry. While she is completing her thesis and course requirements in the fall, she hasn’t completely broken with the humanities and is taking religion, art and ethics classes. She also plays club tennis, is an oboist and an officer in her sorority, and she makes presentations and seeks out donations for the Global Medical Relief program. As for the future, she’s deciding whether to get her PhD right after college or investigate opportunities in bioethics or public policy first. “I’m looking forward to the ‘Science careers outside of academia’ workshop,” said Gracey. “There are a lot of careers that can benefit from people who know science.” This summer, Gracey is learning about cell motility in the lab of Julie Theriot, PhD, in the biochemistry department, and also learning basic lab skills like time management and how to think like a scientist. “I feel like I’m a colleague,” said Gracey. “You slowly gain confidence to the point where you can make contributions and are starting to be considered as a scientist and not a student anymore.”
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New HCOP summer interns arrive along with a former program participant (6/19/02) Lunch with the president (7/23/03)
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Stanford Report, August 6, 2003
