In Memorium: Dr. Pavlica

I was interested in science for as long as I can remember. Much of this has to do with the influence of my first and most important mentor, my mother. When I reached high school, though, I met the second most important mentor for my scientific career, Dr. Robert Pavlica. Sadly, Dr. Pavlica passed away on Tuesday and in honor of his contribution to myself and countless other students I wanted to say a few words.

While many students have outstanding teachers over the course of their lives, it is a rare situation to find one like Dr. Pavlica. Rather than pursue a career in industry or high-level research he taught at the High School level and created a program to teach high school students how to do independent research. The program is now nationally recognized and named Authentic Science Research (ASR). At the time, the concept was unheard of. I was lucky enough to gain acceptance into this very small program during my sophomore year of high school. The result was a mammoth jump-start to my scientific career. I was doing independent, original research in my teens. I was making posters and giving oral presentations at conferences. I was applying for grant monies (which I actually got). All of this without even a high school diploma.

I was very proud of the program that Dr. Pavlica created and even assisted him in its design; the current student handbook is an updated version of the "binder" I created when I was in the program. Towards the end of my high school career, Dr Pavlica and I had some disagreements over the philosphy of scientific conferences and "competitions," but such is to be expected when strong-willed individuals are juxtaposed.

Irrespective of our differences I owe a great deal to Dr. Pavlica. At each step of the way, college research, masters research, and now Ph.D. research, the journey has been very smooth and all of my mentors were amazed at how much I already had under my belt when coming to them at those stages. For all this I owe a debt to Dr. Pavlica. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to repay the debt to him. However, when last we spoke he mentioned how happy he was that I was getting my Ph.D. Ultimately, to him, that was the real endpoint of the program - getting the highest scientific degree possible. Very few graduates of his program complete that full journey. I will.