Harlem Science
Street Fair & Festival
By Jodi Lipper
The Harlem
Children Society recently held its first annual Harlem Science
Street Fair and Festival celebrating the achievements of 47 students from
the inner city, under-resourced high schools, who were chosen
to participate in the Society’s “Experiment with a Dream” science project.
The project paired students with renowned scientists, who acted as mentors
during summer internships held by the students at many of New York’s
leading research institutes.
At the festival, live music played in the background while the students
proudly displayed posters detailing the results of research they conducted
during their internships. Local community leaders acted as judges, and gave
feedback to the students after discussing their work.
The research
topics varied widely, based on the locale of the internships and the students’ personal
interests. Some subjects were purely scientific. Geraldina Ortiz, a high
school senior, studied the fungus Cryptococcus at the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine. Her internship clearly inspired Geraldina, who now hopes to
study medicine, and specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. Another student,
Timisha Woods, studied Antarctic Sediment Cores, and was similarly moved. “We’re
overdue for the next ice age,” she said, and went on to express newfound
concern for her native New Jersey. “We’re going to have a whole
new coastline,” she explained.
Other students
chose topics that were even more pertinent to their daily lives. Dressy Villar
and Theresa Lugo researched “The Effects of the
Media on Urban Adolescent Girls’ Perception of Body Image” at
Hunter College’s Psychology Department. The girls were clearly fascinated
by their own findings. As Dressy described, “Colored girls exhibit
more depressive symptoms when they see media images of other colored girls,
not as much if they see a picture of a Caucasian girl in a magazine.” The
girls’ mentor at Hunter will continue this study during the school
year, by administering a questionnaire on this topic created by Dressy and
Theresa.
High School Junior
Nertila Ujkaj interned at the Museum of Natural History, and studied the
history of Race. Her conclusion is that “Race is not
a proper, nor a valid method to classify groups of people. Nature did not
create races. Society did.” Nertila spoke passionately about her
highly relevant subject. “I couldn’t mix chemicals, so I wanted
to do something that has to do with everyday life,” she said. “Race affects us every day.”
Dr. Sat Bhattacharya,
President and CEO of The Harlem Children Society, describes it as “an Enterprise for generating hope, for creating a
culture, for arming a community with Knowledge to propel itself into the
future.” Indeed, these highly intelligent and enthusiastic students
both display and provide ample hope for themselves, their communities, and
their clearly limitless futures.#
