|
|
AROUND THE QUADS
Steamboat Scholar Internship Benefits Students, Employers
By Shira Boss-Bicak ’93
![](../images/bar.gif)
|
|
Dr. David Altchek
’78 (left) says he enjoyed providing hands-on experience
in medicine to last year’s Columbia Steamboat Scholar,
Dean Arnaoutakis ’05. |
![](../images/bar_flip.gif) |
David Altchek ’78, a renowned orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital
for Special Surgery, doesn’t usually work with medical students,
let alone undergraduates. But when a new organization, The Steamboat
Foundation, started a summer internship program designed to give
promising college students valuable exposure to their fields of
interest, and pay them well to do it, Altchek signed up to be a
mentor. As the program allows, he specified that he wanted to work
with a Columbia College student.
“Medicine is all about apprenticeship, at many levels, and
it’s difficult in college to find out about a career in medicine
if you haven’t had some hands-on experience,” Altchek
says.
Last summer, Altchek worked with his first Steamboat Scholar,
pre-med student Dean Arnaoutakis ’05, who for 10 weeks assisted
Altchek with clinical research projects, trailed him during patient
consultations and observed him at work in the operating room. Altchek
is a top sports medicine specialist, and Arnaoutakis met some star
athletes along the way.
![](../images/bar.gif)
|
|
Steamboat Scholar
Dean Arnaoutakis ’05 speaks with Dr. James Watson, who
won the Nobel prize for his work determining the structure
of DNA, at a Steamboat Foundation reception last summer.
PHOTO: TOM YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHY |
![](../images/bar_flip.gif) |
“The majority of pre-med students are sitting in labs or
volunteering in a hospital, where they’re definitely not going
to get as much exposure,” Arnaoutakis says.
In addition to working, the interns — who last summer were
all in New York, although this year the program is expanding to
other cities — go through an orientation program together
and attend regular dinner events, some with special guests. Last
year, a psychologist met with the group every other week to discuss
leadership issues such as assertiveness and risk-taking. Those who
run the program “were very interested in our fears and concerns
about entering the work field,” Arnaoutakis says. “They
wanted us to not be intimidated about working with [for instance]
a world-renowned surgeon.”
The Steamboat Foundation was started by two managing partners
of an investment firm in Greenwich, Conn., and is named after the
road where that company, Blue Orchid Capital, is located. Andy Walter
(grandson of Hank Walter ’31) and Peer Pederson, the partners,
wanted to create opportunities for meaningful internship experiences.
“As students go into their final year of school, it is a
critical time in their lives,” Walter says. “We’re
looking for [employers] who are going to take time to mentor the
students and avoid the typical summer job where someone ends up
counting paperclips because there’s nothing substantive to
do.”
The foundation selects prominent employer-mentors, such as Altchek,
works with them to design the internships and works with colleges
to select students who are then interviewed and chosen by the employers.
The mentor selects the school he or she wishes to work with, and
then selects a student to be a summer intern. Scholars must be receiving
or eligible for financial aid, and they are paid $12,000 by the
foundation for the internship, which can be in any of eight fields
— business, medicine, law, journalism, public service, science,
sports and arts/entertainment. In some cases, the financial support
provided by the foundation allows the employers to bring in students
when they couldn’t otherwise. As Altchek says of his department
at the hospital, “We don’t have money to give, so we
wouldn’t be able to hire an undergraduate to spend the summer
with us.”
Altchek is continuing as a sponsor and this summer will be working
with Cynthia Gao ’06E, a biomedical engineering major.
|
|
Untitled Document
|