Along with offering classes centered around a wide variety of interests, AHS also offers many unique opportunities outside of school. AHS clubs such as Model United Nations, Future Business Leaders of America, and the AHS Health Careers Club offer experience with politics, business, and health, while classes like Mountain Guide School provide students with the unique opportunity to earn a plethora of outdoor certifications. Similar to the Health Careers Club, the Steadman Clinic offers a lesser-known opportunity called the Education and Public Outreach Committee (EPOC).
EPOC, also called Science Club, is an opportunity offered to AHS students in IB Biology. EPOC was founded 12 years ago by the Steadman Clinic in Vail as a way to give high school students a glimpse into a career as a doctor or researcher. Steadman recently expanded EPOC to their Basalt clinic. This year, Steadman offered the internship to three students at each high school in the Roaring Fork Valley. Greta Gohring, the EPOC manager for the Basalt Steadman clinic, says that students must be extremely involved in the program, so Steadman relies on teachers to aid in the selection process. At AHS, interested IB Biology students fill out an application, and teacher Sarah Benson selects who is accepted.
“We have the teachers select two or three students to participate in the program for the science club. We do that because it is a little bit more of an involved program where you have to have a lot of initiative and independence,” Gohring said.
The EPOC internship is separated into two semesters. In the fall, students work through a variety of guided labs, completing pre and post-lab reports, which helps students learn how to conduct research and analyze lab results. According to Gohring, EPOC is more geared towards research careers. AHS junior Greyson Miller is currently a part of the EPOC program.
“The first semester is when we do trials, and our first lab, we focused on the OR [operating room] and also MRI [magnetic resonance imaging]. The next lab we did was about physical training and sports, and how that affects your different muscle movements and electronic activity. Our last lab that we did for this semester was about cells and different proteins,” Miller said.
During the spring semester, students are tasked with applying their knowledge from the fall semester to an independent project. According to Miller, each high school group chooses its topic based on what interested them during the first semester.
“Going into the second semester, our group from Aspen, which is Cece, Reyna, and I, will make a project, whether it’s about the OR, cells, or PT [physical therapy], and we will have a mentor who we’ll meet with a few times every month,” said Miller. “At the end of all of it, we will go to Vail and present our project to the Steadman Clinic.”
EPOC encourages students to work hard on their independent projects, as the culminating presentation is competitive in its nature.
“At the end of the semester, all of the different groups go to Vail, and we have a big final presentation with all of the Vail EPOC students and the Basalt EPOC students, and the top two winning teams have the opportunity to present their research in front of our research fellows that come to the clinic for a research fellowship,” Gohring said.
For students interested in science careers, EPOC offers a chance to experience what the job may be like. The program is also a great way to express interest in the scientific and medical fields. However, the Steadman Clinic provides various other opportunities for students, such as summer scholars, a week-long program similar to EPOC, and mentorship programs.
“Being a part of the program really gets you that foot in the door here, you know. It shows the initiative and want to learn more about career paths in medicine or research, or anything like that,” Gohring said. “Something that I have recently been implementing here is some mentorship programs here at Steadman, where you can get matched up with someone in the field that you want to learn more about and you can have the opportunity to shadow them and learn more about what they do, how they got there, and get a little bit more involved than what the summer scholars and the science club get you.”
Miller recommends the science club to any AHS students interested in science.
“I think that it [EPOC] teaches you, besides science, about connections and getting in with different places that aren’t just school, and it can teach you a lot more than a class can,” Miller said.
