Summer camp steers Yuma grad toward science

A scholarship to the National Youth Science Camp last month has led Yuma High graduate Kiona Meade to what she expects will be a career in science.

Meade, now a biosystems engineering freshman at the University of Arizona, was one of only two students from Arizona selected for the all-expense-paid program taking place in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia during July. Two students from every state but Washington were picked along with 22 international delegates.

"I didn't think I'd get accepted (to the camp) because I didn't think I was as well qualified as Phoenix students because they have more AP (advanced placement) classes," said the 2008 graduate of Yuma High.

Now in its 45th year, NYSC is a nonprofit science leadership program that encourages students to pursue science careers. When Meade examined the program's Web page, she got excited about the prospect of going, not only because she loves science but because the program would be a homecoming for sorts to West Virginia, where she had graduated from elementary school.

During the mornings, Meade and her fellow delegates attended lectures and in the afternoons conducted experiments in directive studies guided by experts in a specific field.

In a study of renewable energy, Meade made her own biodiesel fuel that powered a diesel engine, built a solar oven that got hot enough to bake cookies, and worked with wind turbines, she recalled.

Another study had delegates build a radio telescope that tracks the sun throughout the night.

And still another had them investigate eugenics, a social philosophy that advocates improving human heredity through various ways of manipulation. This study focused more on the morality of whether such scientific manipulation is ethical, she noted.

In addition, delegates toured the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and met with scientists from NASA, the Department of Energy and the Navy. A former female Los Alamos National Laboratory statistician lectured delegates about the importance of women pursuing science careers.

"It's important for me to have a career I love because some people go to work just to put food on the table and there is no drive or self-interest behind it," Meade said.

She also said she intends to focus on the UA biomedical program and then get a law degree and eventually work as an attorney for an engineering firm so in that way she would be fully prepared to understand all scientific aspects of her company's products.

The NYSC program compelled her to apply herself to science as she never before attempted, Meade explained. It was also interesting to her that women at the program outnumbered men by a ratio of almost 2-to-1. She would highly recommend the program to other high school seniors, she noted.

"I got a lot of inspiration out of this. I'm going to to contact the Governor's Office for Youth and Families. I'm going to see if I can go around the Tucson and Yuma areas to lecture to others to encourage them to apply."

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William Roller can be reached at
wroller@yumasun.com or 539-6858.