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Last year Westminster Christian School senior David Wells started a chemistry club called Atoms and Ions.
It’s for high school students. With approval he might have younger kids join as well.
“I love chemistry, and I was taking a chemistry class at the time,” he says. “My teacher was saying maybe I should tutor younger kids.”
While it was a school club last year, this year it has become an independent club with six members.
Wells mainly focuses on his academics. He attended a pre-college Summer Scholars program at the University of Miami where he took two classes, one on the biology of nursing and the other on cancer epidemiology.
One class was on the main campus and the other required a Metrorail ride to the Sylvester Cancer Center campus.
The students did a couple of projects in the classes. One of the projects was for the cancer epidemiology class which required them to find several studies on the topic of their choosing and compile the research from each of those studies.
He focused on head and neck squamous carcinoma.
“I found research on immunotherapy for the cancer,” he says. “The immunology treatment is effective but expensive. I looked to see if the lower doses were as effective. Could people still get treatment in lower doses so it’s more affordable for them.”
The conclusion he says shows that the lower doses in a wider interval between infusions were still effective, not as effective, but significant enough to be worth it. He had to put together a presentation, show data and his conclusion.
He conducted a volunteer project for the Community Health of South Florida this summer where he created a children’s library.
“It was a full library,” he says. “I occasionally do a restocking for them. The patients take books home occasionally to read.”
He collected and stocked the library with a lot of picture books because the main demographic is children under eight. He did include some short novels for kids up to age 14.
“I had collected books from friends and family, church, my dad’s work,” he says. “I brought them to the facility, and I dropped them off there.”
Wells plans on collecting more books for the library, but he continues to help in other areas.
He took a bunch of toys for Christmas for the children.
“I talked to the director and asked if there is anything else I can help with,” he says.
“Normally the facility closes at five. People in crisis stabilization often stay overnight. The most requested item is Bibles. I was able to collect Bibles in different languages. I believe 20 in English, five in Haitian Creole and five in Spanish. And we made personal care kits for people with basic necessities like toothbrushes, toothpaste, hygienic things that they can’t afford or can’t have access to there.”
He remains in contact with the director so he can occasionally ask if she needs anything else.
For college, Wells has applied to Duke, the University of North Carolina, Boston College, Davidson, Vanderbilt, and the University of Florida.
He has a number of potential careers in mind, although he is a student that enjoys STEM subjects, bio-medical engineering, pre-med and public policy. For some of the colleges he applied for public policy and psychology.
At WCS he’s a member of the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society, the National Science Honor Society, Rho Kappa, Mu Alpha Theta, and the World Languages Honor Society. He’s in the Emerald Scholars program, in the engineering track.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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