Amelia Panico

David Huron, center, a sixth-year pharmacology student in the Weill Graduate School, works with students from the Manhattan Day and Night High School.

One afternoon last summer, eight high school students gathered in the Weill Cornell laboratories to isolate plasma DNA from bacterial culture. Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences students Clare La Fave and David Huron, both from the pharmacology program, led students through the finer points of pipetting and encouraged them to develop their own hypotheses about their experiments.

The class was part of a six-week course, Techniques in Molecular Biology: From DNA to Proteins, offered to students from the Manhattan Day and Night High School who plan to pursue careers in science. Designed by graduate students under the guidance of Outreach Office director Brian Turner, the course is one more example of Weill Cornell's long-standing commitment to New York City high schools.

The Manhattan Day and Night High School serves a unique student population on the Lower East Side. The students are older than the average high school student, ages 17 to 22, and most are recent immigrants to New York. As the name implies, the school accommodates the sometimes-hectic lives of young adults by offering a full schedule of day and evening classes. While the students are high achieving -- 98 percent pass the science Regents examinations -- they have limited access to career-development programs, especially for students interested in medical research.

Assistant principal Michael O'Herlihy was aware of the Graduate School's programs for training teachers in the scientific method, and he contacted Turner to explore the possibility of developing a similar program, in the form of a summer academy, for highly motivated high school students. In the spring Turner convened a group of graduate students to design a six-week course that would use Weill Cornell's sophisticated laboratories to teach techniques rarely available to secondary-school students.

"The idea was to offer students a real hands-on experience in the laboratory. While there is solid theory behind all the activities, we didn't want to spend a lot of time lecturing. We wanted students to learn laboratory techniques by doing science," said Turner.

After much discussion, the group decided to focus on laboratory techniques in molecular biology, including DNA isolation, pipetting, DNA ligation and western blots. A core group of 15 graduate students played a vital role in developing the course lessons plans, carefully testing each lab experiment to be sure of its usefulness to high school students and acting as teaching assistants for each class.

For the high school students, the course offers much-needed exposure to the scientific method in a laboratory setting. According to O'Herlihy, "These students will be ready and able to seek out positions in research labs. This program serves as a building block to their careers in science."

The six-week course also served the needs of the Graduate School. "Many of our students are interested in teaching, and the summer academy gives them an opportunity to plan a course and gain practical experience working one-on-one with students as they conduct the lab experiments," said Turner.

David Huron, a sixth-year Weill Cornell student, participated in the program as a way to give something back to New York City, his adopted home. "I think it's important to get younger students interested in basic science, and we need a strong pipeline of scientists coming up through the ranks to staff the research labs of the future," said Huron. "I worked with the students individually on experiments and lectured on antibiotic resistance. The students were very dedicated; they asked good questions and were very engaged in their work. I enjoyed the whole experience."

Georgia Tucker is a public affairs consultant for the Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell.