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."