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Biology at Notre Dame

"After they feed they’ll be completely round and can’t fly," the graduate student told the group of high school juniors crowded into his warm and humid sealed laboratory. "If you just tap the cage like this they’ll explode."

"Eeewww" was the collective response.

Lobo, who is working on genetically manipulating mosquitoes so they can’t carry malaria, was showing his lab to a select group — members of the University’s first summer program for academically gifted high school seniors-to-be.

For three weeks in July, more than 80 students got a taste of living and learning at Notre Dame as part of the combination enrichment program and get-acquainted opportunity for potential admission applicants.

Participants in the Summer Experience lived in dorms, took non-credit classes with regular faculty, conducted fieldwork and visited the Lake Michigan shore and the Chicago museums. There were tracks for literature, mathematics, finance/entrepreneurship and American language, culture and society. All of the courses took into account issues of ethics and faith, and there were opportunities for community service.

Students came from many parts of the United States as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam and several locations in Latin America. They were selected based on high school transcripts, college aptitude tests, written recommendations and personal essays. The program cost participants $2,220. Financial aid was available for some families.

The Summer Experience courses emphasized group projects. For instance, in DeBartolo Hall one morning, groups in the literature track sprawled on the carpeted floor creating posters illustrating the characters and themes from a book of poems on life in the Dust Bowl. Down the hall a room full of young entrepreneurs listened to James Davis of the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship explain the importance of a good feasibility study by describing one proposed business he’d reviewed. It was for a never-developed product that would let consumers mold slivers of worn-down soap bars into new bars. By the end of the week groups from the class would have to present their own ideas for a start-up business.

John Larson from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was part of a group working on an idea for a shop where up to 15 computer game players could come together and compete over a high-speed connection. Of the summer program he said, "It’s definitely helped me out in terms of the direction I might like to go in college and in life."

Before asking students in his life sciences group if they wanted to see his mosquitoes, Lobo, who received his Ph.D. in microbiology this fall, showed them how to use a fluorescent microscope to identify antibodies in the sectioned heads of fruit flies.

"It’s kind of like the cool stuff they don’t let you do in high school," said Courtney Madigan, from Knoxville, Tennessee, of the summer program’s material.

"Yeah," chimed Kate Cassidy-DeVito from Carmel, New York, "you don’t get to clone genes in high school."

Information about next year’s program is expected to be available on-line by late December at www.nd.edu\~precoll.

— Ed Cohen

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