Students Learn in PRIME Time

     Hopkins takes part in many programs to encourage young
students, especially minorities, to pursue their education after
12th grade. Project PRIME goes a step further: it wants to
interest Baltimore middle and high school students in becoming
teachers.
     PRIME--Programs to Recruit and Inspire Minorities into
Education--is funded by a five-year, $3 million grant from the
Dewitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. It is part of a $20.6
million expansion of the fund's Pathways to Teaching Careers
Program, a national initiative to recruit and train more
minorities to teach in public schools.
     Hopkins is one of eight regional colleges and universities
that form a PRIME partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools
and the Maryland MESA Program. One of the program's many
activities is to bring students to college campuses twice each
academic year. More than 120 students and teachers from four
middle schools participated in half-day activities at Homewood on
Nov. 18: Chinquapin, Garrison, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Johnny
Cake. The keynote address by Warren C. Hayman, of the Division of
Education, set the tone for the day. He reminded the students
that they are ambassadors of their parents, neighborhoods and
schools. He then challenged them to be the best they can be,
regardless of the obstacles they encounter: "I am, I can, I will;
if it is to be, it is up to me."
     Students then separated into groups for the part of the day
called weird science. Some students gathered in Jenkins Hall to
watch Shin Lin, chair of biophysics and associate dean for 
research and graduate studies, demonstrate videomicroscopy, while
others visited student teachers in Shaffer Hall for some
participatory learning. Students got a feel for the chemical
properties and reactions of dry ice. Others got a close-up view
of the physics of liquid flow and how vortexes are formed.
     "This day really impressed the students," said Pamela
Cooper, an eighth grade teacher at Chinquapin Middle School. "It
helps them understand that they can set goals early in their
lives, and it gives them a chance to see how college may fit into
that."