Mt. Sinai ‘Graduates’ High School Students
by Joan Baum, Ph.D.

“This is unique, there’s nothing else like it,” beamed Dr. Nathan Kase, Dean Emeritus of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM), captivated by the graduation of the latest group of youngsters from the Secondary Education Through Health (SETH) program and the Bioscience Studies Institute.

These two programs are part of the Center for Excellence in Youth Education, MSSM’s successful public school outreach and medical recruitment initiative to attract youngsters from poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods to learn about and pursue careers in health care—medicine, nursing, biological sciences and technologies. The program functions by hosting an annual group of approximately 160 select high school students and their teachers to “advance, enrich and expand” the students’ “academic and workplace knowledge base.” Those selected take courses for credit with MSSM faculty, nurses, senior technical staff and with their own high school teachers. This is not an after-school program but a year-long curricular initiative integrated into the student’s general schoolwork.

Originally conceived as a dropout prevention campaign with the New York City Board of Education in 1968, the Center now boasts an extensive and expanding association with New York City non-magnet high schools. Kase points out that the Queens Gateway school came out second in city-wide ranking of non-magnet schools.

In bringing greetings to the graduates and their families and friends, Center Director, Dr. Lloyd Sherman, marveled at the quality of this year’s oral and written presentations, significant not only for what they showed of student interest in science and technology but reflective also of a “broader sense of education.” What’s really “unique” about the MSSM programs, he added, is that they “emanate out of an academic medical center,” a prestigious “cauldron” that attracts an impressive array of funding organizations.

Other speakers continued the theme of success. Dr. Larry Smith, Dean of MSSM Medical Education, emphasized the difference between “success” and merely “high test scores,” noting that students who “believed in themselves” and who saw others as people, not merely as data or names, were the ones who went on to be successful. Welton Sawyer, Superintendent of Manhattan High Schools reminded the audience, by way of an amusing, personal anecdote, that professional advancement proceeds slowly; that one builds to a Master Card by way of Macy’s Card, thus earning credit and respect. Leonard Achan, recipient of the Board of Trustees Excellence in Nursing Practice ’01, challenged the students to “invest” in themselves.

While all wonderful speakers, these were all trumped by guest speaker, Brunilda Estrada, Vanderbilt University Class of ’01, and a Center graduate. In a passionate and focused overview of her recent college work, Brunilda, a ’95 SETH participant, who won a full-tuition scholarship to Vanderbilt, gave ample evidence of how the Mt. Sinai program honed her early desire to be a doctor and deepened her sense of commitment to humanity. She wound up doing original research with aboriginal populations in the Outback in Australia, and though her father said she was “loca,” for wanting to work in a deserted region so far away, he did come around to be proud of her dedication to helping better health care for those whose cultural traditions and geographical isolation kept them far from mainstream assistance. The graduating students in the auditorium listened to her story with rapt attention.

The ceremony ended on an appropriate note. Sherman read Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” expressing challenge and risk, and an implicit reminder of the ideal coexistence of science and the humanities. #

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