Aliyya Swaby Photo
Katherine Perez knew since she took her first advanced physics class that she wanted to be a scientist. Now a rising junior at Southern Connecticut State University, she will get a step closer this summer through a fellowship in nanotechnology and medicine.
A New Haven Promise scholar from Wilbur Cross High School, Perez is one of many students expected to benefit from a new partnership between SCSU and the city of New Haven to shuttle more local kids into the bioscience field.
Representatives from the city and the university gathered at SCSU Monday morning, to sign an agreement formalizing the initiative.
The collaborative program Biotechnology Academic and Career Pathway is intended to promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in New Haven at every level, including in local district schools and in colleges like Gateway and SCSU. It represents a $5 million investment in faculty, equipment and scholarships.
As Alexion Pharmaceuticals prepares to move its offices into a $100 million building downtown, city officials are hoping to grow New Haven into a biotech “cluster of global significance,” said Mayor Toni Harp.
Harp and Papazian
In signing the partnership agreement, the city is committing to “support industry,” in part through funding workforce initiatives and research and development programs, she said. The program focuses on attracting women and minorities to the field, which is a new goal, Harp said. The city will also support up to five internships in the biosciences each semester.
Superintendent Garth Harries said the district’s role in the partnership is to support teachers and students in learning and teaching STEM in the classroom. The Board of Education is hoping to get city funding to construct a new building for Strong School, a STEM-focused K‑4 magnet school, on the SCSU campus.
SCSU’s education students who work and study at Strong School will be learning how to teach the sciences to elementary school children, to start pressing its importance in early education, he said.
SCSU has aligned its “academic program with the needs of industry,” in part by creating a biotechnology major with a focus in chemistry, said the university’s president Mary Papazian. SCSU also is months away from opening a $49 million, 98,000 square-foot academic and lab science building that will house a center for nanotechnology and training labs for other STEM programs.
The building is set to be finished in early summer and should open for use in the fall, Papazian said.