MAP helps students chart a path to science careers

Cinnamon Spear is a self-confessed science nut, even though her chemistry classroom at Lame Deer High School lacked such basic equipment as a Bunsen burner.

But for the last three summers, Spear has indulged her passion at the Montana Apprenticeship Program, a six-week summer science enrichment camp at Montana State University that provides hands-on research experience to students interested in science, technology, engineering and math.

As a result, Spear will take three years of experience in research and working with top scientists at MSU to the Ivy League when she enrolls as a human biology major this fall at Dartmouth College with eventual plans to attend medical school.

"MAP made me love science," said Spear, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe who this summer worked with scientists at the MSU Center for Biofilm Engineering to build a fluorescent protein library for imaging. She said the MAP experience gave her such a leg-up in science that she completed every science course offered at Lame Deer High School and took classes at Dull Knife Community College.

Spear is one of 21 students from throughout Montana who recently completed the 2005 MSU MAP program. The students worked with mentor professors on projects that ranged from studying an acidophilic virus found in Yellowstone National Park to developing a glue to affix bacteria to glass slides.

MAP began with three students in 1980 and is MSU's longest-running minority enrichment program, with more than 350 high school participants in 25 years, according to John Watts, director of MSU's AIRO program, which oversees the MAP program.

Cinnamon Spear of Lame Deer was one of 21 high school students to participate in this year's Montana Apprenticeship Program, a six-week enrichment program at Montana State University. In her third summer with the program, Spear will take top-notch research skills developed with MSU scientists to Dartmouth College, where she will enroll as a freshman in September.
(MSU photo by Erin Raley. )