For a group of 22 California high school students, the impact of a six-week summer program held on the Stanford campus will be felt well into the future. The high schoolers are participants in the Stanford Youth Environmental Science Program (SYESP), the brain-child of co-founders Michael McCullough, a Rhodes Scholar and member of the Class of ’89 and Ana Mallari, a Stanford Law School student.
Now in its fifth year, the program provides leadership and education for gifted, low-income, predominantly minority students concerned with the environment. All past participants have gone on to enroll and remain in college.
Over the past two years, more than 75 percent of the program’s participants have later matriculated at Stanford.
Modeled after the Stanford Medical Youth Science Program, co-founded by McCullough and Stanford alumnus Marc Lawrence, the aims of the program are wide in scope and decidedly fixed on the future.
"We are able to expose the students to a lot of different professional ways of thinking [and] paradigms that professors bring, and the environment underlies it all," Mallari said.
The interests of the students vary, and accordingly, presentations by lecturers and professors encompass an array of topics. "We have environmental law [and] environmental biology," Mallari said. "We talk to [Stanford's] Economics Department, and they do things on environmental economics."
Students' experiences range from public speaking and SAT instruction to aikido and reflection time. Each student is part of a specific track - health, law or engineering - and is exposed to a series of speakers and experiences pertaining to the track.
Santiago Rizzo, a high school senior from Berkeley, chose the law track, through which he had the opportunity to visit the California Supreme Court. Justice Joyce L. Kennard became an inspirational figure for him.
"She went through a lot when she was a child and still managed to climb to the top of the top," Rizzo said.
Apart from personal enrichment and lectures from speakers, including former Stanford President Donald Kennedy and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Robert Kinnally, the students are expected to devise and undertake an outreach project in which they improve their own communities.
Thea Carlson, a student from Santa Cruz, sees room for improvement in her city's recycling program, and plans to use the outreach project to address the issue. "I'm trying to use the example of Berkeley and San Francisco's recycling programs to persuade Santa Cruz to place recycle bins by the trash receptacles in town," Carlson said
All expenses for students are financed through fundraising by McCullough and Mallari. Lecturers and the University donate time and classroom facilities.
The intimate family atmosphere is a key component of the program. "What I want would be that they take the trust and love they feel here and apply it in college and to their dreams," said Liz Schwartz, associate director and third-year staff member.
The program's relationship with the students continues through college. Having helped raise more than $2 million dollars in financial aid last year for its students, the program has made college a reality for its capable, financially underserved students.
The admissions process is rigorous. This year, intensive interviewing was employed to whittle the list of 450 applicants down to the final 22 students. "We choose students not only for need and intellect, but for hunger, altruism, empathy and drive," said McCullough.
The program is in its final week of this year's session with graduation ceremonies slated for Sunday.