Program Gives Students a Leg-Up in the Biotech Field

After his summer internship in the vaccine department of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, 16-year-old Carlos Tinajero said his friends were wrong about the eight-week program in biotechnology.

“Now the joke’s on them because I learned so much over the summer,” Tinajero said.

Tinajero, a student from Oakland’s Life Academy of Health and Bioscience, was among 24 local high school seniors who participated in a summer internship as part of a program coordinated by nonprofit organization Biotech Partners.

About 200 people, including local politicians, the students from the academy and Berkeley High School, their mentors, families and friends, attended the students’ presentations of their experiences yesterday in an annual event hosted by Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals in Berkeley.

The event was part of a program that guides students from underrepresented groups who are beginning their junior year of high school at biotechnology academies and continues that support up to their second year of college.

“(The program) gives insight on not just science and biotechnology, but about preparation for the 21st century and what the real world is all about,” said Ghanya Thomas, program administrator for the high school program.

The program targets students who may be struggling with their

biotechnology course in high school and, once a student applies and is accepted, provides them with both academic and social support services. Many participants in the program are first-generation high school graduates and college students.

“We’re not looking for the A.P.,

A-plus or those types of students,” said Deborah Bellush, executive editor of Biotech Partners. “We’re looking for the students that need us.”

Several local dignitaries who acted as judges of a poster contest at the event said the students impressed them with their presentations.

“They make me embarrassed at what I did between my junior and senior years of high school,” said Laurie Capitelli, a member of the Berkeley City Council.

Representatives from the offices of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock and Senator Don Perata attended the event. A Toyota USA Foundation representative awarded a $200,000 grant to Biotech Partners that will fund future programs.

Since 1992, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals has hosted the event annually as part of an agreement with the City of Berkeley to provide opportunities to underrepresented youth in the field of biotechnology.

Bayer has hired about 48 program graduates, including students from Laney College. Biotech Partners has aided more than 800 students since its inception in 1992, according to its Web site.

Chinyere Okereke, who spoke at the event about the program, said the stereotypes she initially held about scientists disappeared after her internship.

“It opened my eyes to another side of science,” she said.

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