Local high school students are first VCU Life Sciences scholars

By Michael Ford
University News Services

RICHMOND, Va. – For 10 days this summer, 30 high school students will head to Virginia Commonwealth University to immerse themselves in the field of life sciences, preparing to study some of today’s most baffling questions as we learn to live in the era of the human genome.

The VCU Life Sciences Scholars Program, in its first year, is a partnership between VCU and four local public school districts. The program will run from July 16-27 on the VCU campus.

The program is designed to introduce high-school students to the emerging field of life sciences. Areas of study will encompass issues like environmental protection and the ethical and scientific questions surrounding DNA used as evidence to prove a criminal suspect’s innocence or guilt. And students will examine genetic sequencing and begin to understand how to guard genetic information once it is uncovered.

Students will hear lectures given by leading medical and scientific experts; conduct hands-on lab work and visit areas like the VCU Health System’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine and VCU’s 432-acre Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences. Students also will visit the Science Museum of Virginia as well as a sophisticated DNA research lab at VCU, where they will work on a project involving molecular genetics.

"This will be a rare educational experience enabling students to get a firsthand understanding of the life sciences," said Thomas F. Huff, Ph.D., vice provost for life sciences at VCU. "These students will experience what they would normally have to wait until graduate school to experience."

The program also will have a strong bioethical component that will challenge students to form opinions and discuss technology’s role, as well as its limits and implications for human society. While many of these complex issues are still under debate around the world by experienced scholars, Huff says the subject matter is not too advanced for 16- and 17- year-olds.

"It’s absolutely necessary to introduce students to these issues as early as possible. That’s the purpose of this program. Life sciences advances and decisions are upon us. The university has both an opportunity and responsibility to help the public assess and influence what the impact is going to be."

Huff says the program also will teach students to think through related issues – like who controls the information that scientists uncover and how we, as scientists and Americans, should respond to the prospect of human cloning, or how we balance technological advances with protecting the environment.

"Everyone wants answers to questions of how scientific advances will impact our lives," said Huff. "This program will examine recent advances and the technology that made them possible."

This summer program fits directly into the overarching vision for VCU Life Sciences, which includes emerging areas such as biotechnology, bioinformatics, forensic science and environmental sciences and focusing not only on graduate and professional students and the research enterprise, but also on undergraduate education.

The VCU Life Sciences Scholars Program will draw students from Richmond, Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties. Science advisors from each of the schools selected the students.