On a recent summer morning, Chicago public high school students fanned across a fourth-floor laboratory in the University of Chicago’s Abbott Hall, working to illuminate an LED bulb with batteries they’d constructed out of lemons.
Xiaoying Liu, a senior instructional professor and laboratory director for molecular engineering at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, looked on nearby, aiding teams of students in inserting their zinc and copper strips properly and measuring voltage. The Introduction to Molecular Engineering lab is one of many opportunities for the high schoolers, all participants in UChicago’s Collegiate Scholars Program, to experience walking in college students’ shoes—or, in this case, donning their lab coats.
Led by the University’s Office of Civic Engagement, the free, three-year Collegiate Scholars Program has been preparing talented Chicago public high school students from diverse backgrounds for admission and success at highly selective colleges for more than 20 years. During the summer months, participants take courses like Liu’s on UChicago’s campus while enrichment activities during the academic year are geared toward college readiness, leadership development, and career exploration.
Experiences like Professor Liu’s lab expose program participants to advanced and emerging fields of study like molecular engineering and give the students a chance to work closely with the same faculty and instructors that teach UChicago undergraduate and graduate students.
A real-world lens
Monique Wesseh a rising junior at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy High School who lives in the Roseland neighborhood, had never heard of molecular engineering before she enrolled in Liu’s summer course.
“I just thought it sounded so interesting and I wanted to try something new,” Wesseh said. Learning about the tangible ways science shows up in daily life—like solar power or even how a lemon could conduct electricity—has been eye-opening, Wesseh said, and not something she’d expect to see in her CPS classrooms.
That emphasis on practical application is what Liu said she’s aiming for when she works with Collegiate Scholars, as well as introducing them to the research areas and advanced topics that are explored at the Pritzker School.
“We always have a diverse class with students of various backgrounds and a range of interests in their pursuits during their academic journey, so an important consideration in designing the session is to try to make scientific concepts highly relatable,” Liu said. “We try to reveal the real-world applications for the students and then give them the opportunity to really test drive that in the lab.”
Cultivating confidence
Across the hall from Liu’s pre-lab lecture, Omar McRoberts, an associate professor in the departments of Sociology and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, led another group of Collegiate Scholars in a discussion about what conditions make sociologists consider a society modern in his Introduction to Sociological Thought course. For McRoberts, who’s taught Collegiate Scholars courses for the past seven summers, beyond exposing local high school students to college-level material and instructors, the program offers participants an important avenue for seeing themselves, and their abilities, in a new light.
“I hope CSP students come away from the program, and my classes, with a new sense of confidence. That is the sense that they really do belong in these classrooms and hallways and quadrangles—these places are yours,” McRoberts said. “And this should be no empty confidence—this sense is based on what they actually do and say and write and otherwise accomplish while they are in CSP.”
Wesseh echoed this sentiment as Liu’s lab wrapped up for the day. Taking Molecular Engineering, and taking part in Collegiate Scholars more broadly, Wesseh said, have made her more excited for college. Though she’d never been on a college campus prior to the program, she’s found she likes the structure and feels more confident in her ability to handle the workload when she attends college herself in a few years, with hopes to study public health.
“It’s really helping them to broaden their perspectives about what they’re capable of,” Liu said.