WestConn professor of Chemistry Dr. Nicholas J. Greco, with High School students Atley Ammerman and Sam Viner. In nearly every high school classroom sits a student who is ahead of the others. These young people understand the concepts faster, complete the work flawlessly, and often need a challenge the school can’t provide. Western Connecticut State University offers them an opportunity. Dr. Nicholas J. Greco, professor of Chemistry at WestConn, is one of several educators who devote large parts of their summer and regular semester schedules to working with those high school students. “As an undergraduate student I participated in a summer program at Stonehill College,” Greco said. “That was very instrumental in my being able to participate in chemical research, and so I’ve always wanted to involve students in the summer. It’s a way to engage very talented high school students in novel research that we’re doing in the lab.” Greco worked with Atley Ammerman from Newtown High School and Sam Viner from Staples High School, both 17 and intent on developing their chemistry and research skills before they enroll in college. “My goal is to give them a full flavor of what research looks like,” Greco said. “A lot of times in chemistry, the principal investigator, or the person who’s in charge, has one or two particular projects, and they say, ‘This is what you are going to work on.’ With most of my students, even the college-age students in my courses, what I try to do is say, ‘Listen, we basically play around in the area of nucleic acids. But if there is something that you find interesting, let’s develop a project related to that.’ So we come up with a question or a hypothesis, and then we really sit down and we look at it. I show them the tools that we could use for literature searches, for designing a project, for thinking about purchasing of chemicals, etc.? How do we then accomplish those? We really go from start to almost finish to figure out what a project looks like.” Working in WestConn’s biology labs allows students hands-on experience and a glimpse of college learning. Sam and Atley have taken advantage. “Currently we are working with iodouridine, which is a nucleoside base with an iodine off of it,” Atley said. “You are able to attach different compounds and structures onto the nucleoside base. What we’re doing is using a boronic acid to connect these two functional groups. The one we have has two halogen chains. Our goal ideally is to switch out a hydrogen with different halogenated compound molecules — chlorine, fluorine and bromine — onto it.” “We aren’t doing any extra chemistry to add the fluorine and bromine to the benzophenone,” Sam said. “We bought ones that already have them. What we’re doing is attaching them, and it’s a challenge itself to successfully attach them with a new molecule added.” The university is working to provide more such services to the community. In addition to summer programs, WestConn allows some high school students to take college courses for credit, and arranges internships and other experiential activities across academic disciplines and departments for current students. Greco said such extra-curricular opportunities create unique student experiences, including for Atley and Sam. “One of the challenges is they’re high school students, and so what they’re doing, our students learn as sophomores. So they won’t have the full depth, but they have enough skills that they can accomplish with my help,” Greco said. “I think it’s very valuable for them. I do think that if they can have a low-stakes experience where they get to work with me and potentially with another student in a lab is very valuable.” Atley’s stepmother is a WestConn graduate of the Biology program, and she recommended he contact Greco. Sam sent emails to several universities and Greco was the first to respond. “It’s really great to have access to this equipment because I love chemistry so much, and it’s a career I want to pursue in the future,” Atley said. “I’m so happy to get hands-on experience, especially at such a young age, and to learn more about what it’ll be like in college to really cement the idea that this is something I do want to pursue.” Sam agreed. “When people would always ask me, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’, I’d always said research, but I never had hands-on experience. I could have gone to college and found out that I didn’t like it at all, and that would have been really bad. Doing this, knowing that I do enjoy doing research, makes me a lot more confident that it’s something that I want to keep doing in college.” Two students who formerly took advantage of Greco’s summer work had similar experiences. Paloma Lenz was going into her senior year at Danbury High School when she reached out to Greco about research assistant positions in his lab. She conducted experiments on Fridays after school throughout the school year, was accepted at Yale, and just graduated with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering, with a concentration in Architecture. She has accepted a year-long fellowship to conduct independently designed research activities that revolve around air quality, after which she plans to apply to Ph.D. programs. Greco said that in his view, working with all types of students, not only those enrolled at the university, is part of WestConn’s role. “Working with Dr. Greco absolutely confirmed my interest in pursuing scientific research,” Lenz said. “He offered just the right amount of instruction to ensure I was well-equipped to pursue my research on DNA aptamer characterization independently. I went into Yale as a biochemistry major largely due to my experiences with him. He also supported my applications for research fellowships while at Yale by writing a letter of recommendation that allowed me to secure funding for my research.” William Fall worked with Greco before his senior year of high school and did research on the chemical and biophysical properties of DNA molecules. He entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to study biochemistry and biophysics and is now a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in molecular biology at Weill Cornell Medicine Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in New York. His work with Greco at WestConn “was the first time I ever set foot in a real chemistry lab,” Fall said. “Science had long been my favorite subject in school, but getting to work in the lab and physically do experiments alongside Dr. Greco was an entirely different experience, one that was exciting and meaningful as it exposed me to the world of research. I really fell in love with the scientific process and getting to pursue one’s own curiosity.” Greco said that in his view, working with all types of students, not only those enrolled at the university, is part of WestConn’s role. “From a public institution standpoint, this provides a community service,” he said. “We’re giving back to the community by providing support for students who want to get these types of experiences. I am uncertain as to where else they could get them. 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