STARS marks silver anniversary with another group of summer participants
By Lin Lofley
The 25th edition of the Science Teacher Access to Resources at Southwestern (STARS) program brought 43 students and eight teachers to the UT Southwestern Medical Center campus over the summer, as the high schoolers from across Dallas-Fort Worth got a close-up look at life in research laboratories.
The eight-week program, funded by the state and from other educational entities, was founded in 1991. STARS has now served more than 30,000 students and 5,000 teachers from more than 2,000 schools.
“Having these students and teachers on campus is always very exciting,” said Dr. Stuart Ravnik, Associate Dean of the UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and Associate Director of the STARS Program. “They bring great energy to UT Southwestern and, based on the comments from the faculty, many of them make strong contributions to the labs.”
For Denver Baumgartner, the summer spent in the laboratory of Dr. Ming Chang Hu, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, and of Pediatrics, was a chance to consider a range of options he is considering for his future.
“I didn’t know anything about STARS, but my mom heard about it at an informational meeting,” said Mr. Baumgartner, a student at Richardson’s J.J. Pearce High School. “But I came here with an interest in surgery, and now I also have to consider a career in the business aspect of science.”
Asked about the most interesting part of his STARS experience, Mr. Baumgartner replied, “Any conversation I had with Dr. Hu. He knows so much, and he was so interested in trying to help me, it was ridiculous. I started the summer feeling my way around, but the people in the lab were so supportive that they made me feel less intimidated.
“The first time that I got my data, and ran a preliminary test, and then got results? I was hooked.”
Shreeya Chodavadia, a senior at Plano East Senior High School, and winner of the 2016 Kathryn and Ashley H. Priddy Award from the Dallas Regional Science Fair, had much the same experience in the laboratory of Dr. Ganesh Raj, Associate Professor of Urology.
“The people I worked with were so supportive,” Ms. Chodavadia said. “They are also talented, but very humble.”
She qualified into the STARS program with a project at the Science Fair that caught the eye of Dr. Ravnik and his team of graduate students who worked at the event. Her project on improving diabetic medications by controlling sugar levels through kinetics helped her stand out.
“At the science fair, I talked to a couple graduate students about my project,” said Ms. Chodavadia, who is surveying a half-dozen of the top schools in the nation, including UT Austin and UT Dallas, as she plans her next step. “I answered their questions, and then Dr. Ravnik came around. And then he came back.”
Dr. Ravnik was sold on her project, and on her becoming a candidate for the Priddy Award.
“The support of the Southwestern Medical Foundation and benefactors like the Priddy family is so valuable in capturing the spirt of discovery that these students get to experience during the summer research program,” he said. “Helping a young science-oriented student move from a home-grown, do-it-yourself science project to cutting edge biomedical research here at UT Southwestern is one of the most rewarding things about this part of my job.”
