At 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 18, almost every seat in a lecture hall on the third floor of the Lewis Katz School of Medicine was filled—not with medical students, but with middle schoolers.
They were there to participate in Saturday College, a program for local youth designed to introduce them to the variety of programs they can explore at the university level and career paths they can pursue upon graduation. Every month, the program takes place at a different Temple school or college, with the most recent one held at Katz.
Following a brief welcome from the Marjorie Joy Katz Dean of the Lewis Katz School of Medicine Amy J. Goldberg and President John Fry, the students broke into groups for hands-on learning. The activities included practicing surgical knots, extracting DNA from strawberries and interacting with “patients”—mannequins in the simulation center. “It’s really great to get to students in middle school when they’re starting to form their own self-view, to get them to think about that fact that ‘college can be for me; college is for me,’” said Susan Nicodemus Quinn, director of precollege programs at Temple.
Two of the students embarking on this exploration were Kalid and Khaleel Henry, brothers who attend Universal Charter School. Their mother, Kiahfa Evans, is grateful for the opportunity to introduce the boys to the medical sciences because of the impact medicine has on their family.
“One of my children, Kalid, has an autoimmune disease,” she explained. “My older daughter just went off to college to be an engineer, but she changed her major to become a pathologist to learn about his disease. So to have them experience a program like this means the world to me. It helps him understand the background of medicine, diseases, experiments and all the science behind it.”
Right now, Kalid wants to be an NBA basketball star. But in her remarks, Goldberg reassured the students about the diversity of their interests, and their future paths. “If [math and science] aren’t your favorite subjects, that’s okay,” she said. “Because one of the best things about healthcare and medicine is that there are so many ways that you can make an impact. Whether you love science, whether you love art, whether you love technology, or problem-solving, or, truly the most important, caring for others—there is a home for you in healthcare.”
The number of student attendees who ultimately pursue healthcare careers remains to be seen. However, President Fry emphasized that whatever these young people decide to do, Temple is here to help them do it. “Temple University is your university,” Fry said. “It’s a public university, it’s Philadelphia’s only public university, so this is your place, and you can take as much ownership of that university as you decide to.”