(8/2008) - With her junior year half over and the promise of summer rapidly approaching, Alexandra Caffrey ‘06 had a choice of opportunities before her - she could either hawk peanuts at Fenway Park for the Red Sox, or she could accept a science-based summer internship in a remote part of Canada, where the population of puffins outnumbered the people.

Caffrey chose Canada, and she had no regrets about her decision. It was also a good test of her determination to pursue science over summer. She “had never been in a remote area for that long,” “did not know anybody in Canada,” and “never spent that much time away from home.”

Caffrey was one of the first of three Brooks students to take part in Brooks School’s Students on the Forefront of Science (SFS), a hands-on, merit-based science internship program developed by Brian Palm, a teacher of biology, physics and environmental science, to expose students to research, technology and real-world issues in the sciences.

The program had grown from its three internships in 2005. The summer of 2008 featured six science options. Along with the internship at the Quebec-Labrador Foundation, in which Caffrey was involved, there are two at Massachusetts General Hospital, one at UMass Memorial Medical Center, one at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and one at the bio-technology firm Pervasis.

The internships are awarded to top-level Brook students in biological and environmental sciences. And the program itself came about as the direct result of Palm’s quest to help Brooks distinguish itself and differentiate its science program from those of other schools.

As Palm said, “Having worked in the sciences in the nonprofit arena, I knew that one of the big issues with high school science is that you don’t get an idea of what it’s going to be like to get a job in the sciences, so part of the rationale for creating SFS was addressing how can we offer an experience to kids that is going to give them experience in the sciences while also offering something unique to Brooks.”

“Part of our job as educators is to recognize the limitations of the classroom and, after doing this, work to create opportunities that push limits, present new challenges and in a way open up each student’s eyes to the possibilities in our changing world.”

Before the program began, Palm spent the previous summer and fall speaking with alumni and parents about the possibility of SFS while forging connections with institutions to partner with, and with families who could host student interns. Dr. Robert Langer, a Brooks parent, provided two of the internships through his lab at MIT and also provided critical funding to help make SFS a reality.

From a highly qualified pool of 10 applicants vying for the program’s first three slots, Caffrey was selected along with Amy Campbell ‘06 and Jamie Ghassibi ’06. And when Caffrey was interning in northern, Campbell and Ghassibi were ensconced in Cambridge at Harvard, partaking in summer classes in neurobiology and genetics respectively, while also spending hours each day, in long white coats and goggles, working across town at the Langer Lab on MIT’s campus.

Palm recognized the early rewards of the first session of SFS about halfway through the summer, when he tried to have a conversation with Campbell about her ongoing work in the Langer Lab. Palm noted that “it had gotten to the point that Amy was doing things that were beyond my experience in biology.”

As Campbell herself describes it, “I spent six hours a day, five days a week in the lab working with some of the most brilliant people I have ever met. I also grew my own culture of endothelial cells, which is essentially like babysitting because you have to check their growth every day, ‘feed’ them three times a week, and change their flask once a week. All of this work must be done under a chemical hood because even the smallest contamination would dictate that you need to start over from the beginning.”

“Quite simply, this was a commitment and it was one of the first commitments I’ve made on my own for my own reasons. I didn’t have to show up for class, and I didn’t have to spend 30 hours a week at the lab. The doctors and researchers would have been busy enough with their own projects without having to make sure that their intern was spending enough time doing work.... I did it because it was an incredible opportunity to push myself at something I am passionate about.”

Ghassibi’s retelling of his experience was equally effusive when describing his involvement in his class on genetics, where he studied “the history of genetics, the structure and chemistry of DNA and RNA, the genome, and the implications of genetics in the world.” His lab experience concerned the synthesis of microscopic vectors containing DNA or RNA sequences that could be injected into the bloodstream to treat various diseases through gene therapy, with the aim of the project being to cure various cancers.

Like Campbell, Ghassibi appreciated receiving important lessons beyond the study and application of science. For him, “the experience gave me a better sense of what kinds of atmospheres I would prefer for college and it gave me a view of people who work, people who know where they will be for the next four or five years. Now I realize that this is an aspect of my future that I had no idea about; this idea of working at one place, doing the same thing for many years is more real now and is something to think about.”

And SFS still generates the excitement and appreciation for new and, as importantly, worthwhile experiences among its more recent participants. Brandon Park ’07, who performed disease research at an MIT lab, noted, ”While many current medicines try to cure the symptoms of a disease, the new medicines I was working with would be able to make a virus or any disease-causing pathogen benign by altering its DNA. It was an amazing experience to be a part of a research group that is a step ahead of others.”

More recently, Michael Hendrickson ’09 was able to see real-life medical procedures up close. “The best part of my summer was observing surgeries in Massachusetts General Hospital’s operating room. Being inches away from a trauma patient who had been thrown from a motorcycle into the back of another person’s care and seeing the OR team save his life was quite incredible. It was truly inspiring.”

To Brian Palm, “These kids figure out how to ask questions and interact in a professional environment. They learn how to succeed on their own. I think they come back a little older and wiser after a summer with SFS.”

For now, the students who have returned from the previous summer’s program will be reaping the benefits of their experience, bringing the confidence gained and the knowledge learned to each of their senior classes. And this year the school is ready for them with a new state-of-the-art science building. Students will learn in large lab-classrooms, and will be offered new courses like engineering, forensic science and anatomy and physiology.