Tracy High students participated in the Japanese-American Biotechnology Cultural Exchange Program during the beginning of this month (August) for their fourth year and only seem to build stronger ties with the Mitto Daini High School in Japan.

“Mitto Daini High School is an all-girls Japanese science-based school that is part of the national government that focuses on reducing the gap between girls and boys in the area of stem-research,” Erin McKay, biology teacher at Tracy High School and one of the coordinators of this program, said. “It’s basically an education enrichment program that covers a lot of different areas of science, not just biotechnology.”

Senior Marjorie Caparas has been involved in the biotechnology program at Tracy High for three years and has participated in this program for two years. Other students like Caparas are grateful for the resources they have access to in the biotechnology program at Tracy High School and were excited to share with the foreign students.

“We did a DNA extraction lab in the classroom then went to the San Joaquin County Office of Education and did presentations on American and Japanese culture,” Caparas said. “

The Japanese students were not only exposed to the science aspect of Tracy High School that a majority of the Tracy High participants are involved in, but the general experience of American high schools through a tour of campus.

“I showed the girls around Tracy High’s campus and pointed out the diverse activities that occur here on campus every day,” senior and first year participant Mikaela Mizuno said.

Although cultural and language barriers can be a large obstacle between students from different countries, these students were able to share their passion for science to form a common bond.

“It was an opportunity to reach out to foreign students, students who have never been exposed to experiments, but share the same interest for science, so it was cool to be a part of that,” Caparas said.

Before Mito Daini High students came to Tracy High School they visited Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts and San Francisco, getting a sense of how universal the area of science really is.

“Science is international, science is about communication, that you can’t live in your isolated national bubble, that the world is a much bigger place on not only a cultural level but also an economic and scientific level” McKay said.

This program was able to impact students, not only from Japan, but also, right here, in Tracy.

“At Tracy High School, International Baccalaureate is very centered on science, and this isn’t accessible to most other schools, and that was evident in the Japanese schools, whose students go to a science school, but have never performed experiments before,” Caparas said. “It just made me more grateful for our science department here.”

“This program helped with my communication and leadership skills as I had to introduce them to our very different school and work collectively with them on an experiment that we both were new to,” Mizuno said.

This program is so well appreciated that Tracy High graduates return in order to further build bonds internationally with other science-oriented students.

“A lot of graduated students came back for the program, so I’ll probably be a part of that crowd next year,” Caparas said.