The last several years I've been on the Board of the Gateway to Higher Education, a program in New York City's... New York City school system that is designed to help minority kids get into science and medical careers. The program takes children... well, originally was directed at kids starting ninth grade, now it starts at seventh grade, offers them special classes in math and science in schools, within the schools in which the program begins. They're offered special training in math and science, a longer school day, Saturday mornings of enrichment experience in a place like the Museum of Natural History or Rockefeller University, a summer of one month vacation instead of three, and two months working in laboratories at Mount Sinai Medical School or elsewhere in New York. And, the results now in something of the order 15 or 16 high schools throughout all of New York, the results have been extraordinary. In high schools in which the drop-out rate is over 50% the situation in New York schools as in inner city schools around the country, around this country, are very, very unhappy ones. The results in the first 2000 kids that went through this program were that 97% graduated from high school, 95% went on to four-year colleges, and of that group, at the time the last study was done, 80% had graduated and many had gone on to medical school or to degree programs in science.

We have a Gateway Graduate here at the Brigham. There are two Gateway Graduates in the present fourth-year class at Yale Medical School. There are Gateway kids in many, many places. We're now in the process of moving that program to Boston and I hope that once we launch it here we might get it to schools around the... the country where the need is so very great.