SOUTH JERSEY

Science on a shoestring in Camden

Kim Mulford
@CP_KimMulford

Here's a new recipe for Camden: Take about four dozen city teenagers learning English and add a handful of former high school teachers-turned-medical students. Mix well in a borrowed college science lab.

Sprinkle in some recyclable materials: cardboard tubes, plastic packaging, some empty egg cartons. Serve with a few marbles.

For a second year, students from Cooper Medical School of Rowan University are volunteering to teach science through Rowan's Upward Bound program. Though the Saturday enrichment program for 50 Camden students is federally funded, it operates on a bare budget, said its director, Margie Olivencia.

So while though there's money to take kids on field trips and to pay for some staff, there's not much left for things like microscopes, goggles, dissection kits or slides.

Three Cooper medical students want to change that.

This week, the program is among three nationally to vie for grant money through a video competition offered by the Association of American Medical College. The competition challenged medical schools to work with schoolchildren to increase diversity in the health professions. The video with the most votes will be awarded $7,000 toward the program, second place will earn $5,000 and third will win $3,000.

As of Monday, the Camden video was in second place.

Darshan Patel is used to making do in the classroom. A second-year medical student and one of the video's creators, Patel taught math for three years in the cash-strapped Philadelphia school system.

Faced with similar obstacles in Camden, the 28-year-old and his fellow volunteers use inexpensive materials to spark students' interest with hands-on science experiments. They want to do more: clone African violets, perhaps, or dissect a frog or fetal pig.

"We have to cut corners obviously, because we don't have access to all these things," Patel said. "But it's stark when you compare it to a fully functioning high school classroom in a well-resourced setting. These are things that are just taken for granted."

Still, the Saturday science labs have an impact, even on college mentors returning to help with the program.

"They're engaged and they're learning," Olivencia noted. "We're doing great things, and these kids are moving on."

Jose Fernandez, a 19-year-old Camden resident, enrolled in Upward Bound as a high school sophomore, two years after arriving in the United States from the Dominican Republic.

"It's great to see the students now having so much fun with science," said Fernandez, now a Rowan biology major.

Helenyi Santiago, an 18-year-old Camden resident, plans to take nursing courses next semester, inspired by the medical students.

"What I love about that class is they do a lot of labs," said Santiago, a Rowan sophomore. "The students don't just listen to literature.

"They even catch the attention of me."

Reach Kim Mulford at (856) 486-2448 or kmulford@courierpostonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @CP_KimMulford

On the web:

• To watch the video, visit www.youtube.com/user/AAMCvideo and click on "Science on Saturdays in Camden, N.J."