(Fall 2019) – For many students, summertime is an opportunity to take a break from the rigors of a busy school year. But for SMART Scholar, Carlos Jaramillo, this past summer was an opportunity to pursue his first internship, working with the Pacific AIDS Education & Training Center (PAETC) for UCSF’s Summer Researchers in Global Health (SRGH) program.
After learning about the internship from his SMART advisor, Carlos jumped at chance to work with the university’s reputable program. “I’ve been interested in medicine since freshman year of high school. I love helping people, and I love science. Medicine is the perfect combination of the two.”
Carlos, a senior at San Francisco University High School, was selected out of the competitive pool of applicants and began his internship mid-June along with nine other Bay Area high school students, working at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus.
The program provides students substantial latitude in their field of research and pairs them with their internal experts in their selected subjects. As Carlos wanted to study HIV in public health, he was paired with two mentors from PAETC: Prescott Chow and JaDawn Wright, PAETC’s Co-Principal Investigator & Director and Deputy Director, respectively.
Working jointly with experts in the field, Carlos says he became more comfortable in a professional setting and learned to ask for help. “I got a lot of personal experience in self-advocacy and independence. I’d have to ask for help if I needed guidance, but I also had to take initiative and do things on my own.”
In collaboration with his mentors, Carlos’s project was to create an organizational system for PAETC’s various training curricula, grouping them by major focus areas such as HIV testing and HIV treatment processes. He summarized trainings, identified resources and needed partnerships for the trainings, and developed his project through an interactive, web-based platform.
At the outset of his internship, Carlos was immersed in what research science looks like in a professional setting. He spent six full weeks working on his project, while also attending various lectures and discussions led by epidemiologists and doctors.
Carlos’s exposure to HIV/AIDS research in global medicine not only provided him with insight into a profession of interest, but also the various collegiate paths to reach it. “I learned a lot of the researchers studied different things before becoming experts in global medicine. It opened my mind to options once I’m in college. Nearly all of them studied abroad and really encouraged it. That idea used to scare me! But now I definitely want to do it.”
The internship culminated in a Project Showcase where interns presented research findings to UCSF staff, parents, and program peers. His mentor, Prescott, notes Carlos’s growth during the six-week internship, “In this short time, he transformed into an articulate, self-assured, and confident young adult. I also think he’s come to appreciate the complexity of working in a field like HIV/AIDS and public health. I hope it continues to influence how he sees and experiences the world.”
