By Lauren Henry '99 - The Taft School

AROUND THE PONDpondPoole FellowsMany Taft students do extraordinary things during their summer vacations, but for most of the 13 Robert Keyes Poole Fellows, this wasperhaps the “most amazing” summer of their young lives. Mostly seniors, the students received grants for summer projects ranging from$500 to $3,000. For all of them, it was a chance to put the school’s motto of service into practice.Sarah Barnes ’00 and Kat Liu ’00 traveledto Pejibaye, Costa Rica, for a month. Bothspent the mornings painting houses, andin the afternoon Sarah helped run a daycamp. The coolest part of the trip, Sarahsaid, was “spending time with the peopleof the town, learning about their culture,and becoming a part of their community.”Kat had an internship at the general store“Las Vegas” for Spanish immersion in theafternoon. “Being in Costa Rica was awesome,”she said. “To be in such a beautifulcountry and at the same time be immersedin such a wonderful culture isdefinitely an experience and opportunityI will never forget.” Their trip was organizedby World Horizons.Adriana Blakaj ’00 used her Poole Grantto work at Mount Desert Island BiologicalLaboratory for six weeks doing geneticresearch on the transferring and p53 genesin dogfish and the zebra fish respectively.A Yale professor/physician and a JohnsHopkins professor/physician directed theresearch. The “coolest part,” she said, “wasdefinitely the learning experience. I did alot of research and primarily worked withthe select genes in the DNA of the zebraand dogfish. It’s so unbelievable and amazingto be able to understand just a littlebit of what occurs on the cellular levelwhere the eye is unable to see.”Lauren Bonenberger ’00 and Avery Moore’00 went to Great Abaco Island in theBahamas (which has since been devastatedby Hurricane Floyd), and did whale anddolphin research. “We were out on theboat watching for dolphins and whalesmost days, but also helped with identifi- Poole Fellow Lisa Ehrlich ’00 spent achilly summer studying glaciers in Iceland.