An adventure in learning at the Camden aquarium

A 14-year-old who has never seen the ocean cradles a sea creature in his palm.

With poise and patience, he explains why this is a sea star, not a starfish, and gently flips it over to reveal its underside.

"When you're reading about it, you don't get the full perspective," Rae'kwon Ross says, smiling just enough to reveal two deep dimples.

A whip-smart Camden eighth grader, Ross has known since he was 7 that he wants to be a scientist. Not just any scientist, but an epidemiologist.

Through an innovative program at Adventure Aquarium in Camden that trains, and pays, teens to be aquatic-biology educators, Ross is getting his first intensive exposure to science. In a few weeks, he will go to the Jersey Shore with the Community and Urban Science Enrichment Program (CAUSE) to taste saltwater and gaze at sea life in its natural habitat for the first time.

"I just can't wait to see his reaction," said Cheronda Frazier, director of the program. "That first time a student goes to the beach who has never been - something happens. It opens up something."

Since 1993, when the nonprofit New Jersey Academy for Aquatic Sciences launched its program at the then-new aquarium with four students, CAUSE has opened up a world for Camden teens that is far beyond - or far below - their troubled city.

With a $400,000 operating budget sustained through donations and grants, the academy reports that 100 percent of CAUSE's more than 130 Camden teens have graduated from high school, almost all have gone to college, and 80 percent have majored in education or science. Its graduates include at least one physician and one chemist.

That's no small feat in a city where about half of high school students don't graduate, and in a country where minorities are underrepresented in science professions.

Last year, CAUSE expanded to include eighth graders such as Ross, who are called "explorers." After a year of sessions once or twice weekly, the explorers will go on to the internship program, where high school students are paid minimum wage to learn how to run aquatic-science programs for children.

The interns ultimately write the curricula that they teach at free five-week summer camps at Camden schools and community centers. They also run aquarium sleepovers for Boy Scouts, after-school programs, and other community programming.

All the while, they expand their knowledge, taking free outdoor education trips each year to places like the Florida Everglades.

With about 800 hours a year logged - working and learning as often as four days a week - interns spend almost as much time in the program as they do in school. And they earn enough money to help pay for food and utilities at home.

But education and money are just part of the story, according Brian DuVall, chief executive officer of the academy. "Aquatic science is just the hook," he said.

Twice a month teens gather in circles for rap sessions on topics such as abuse at home or bullying at school. Academy staff members help the interns with math homework and take them on trips to colleges to impress upon them the importance of continued education.

Just this week, the program referred an intern with a bad tooth to a free dental clinic.

"We try to address all of their needs," Frazier said.

Each after-school training session begins with an icebreaker and ends with questions like "What was the coolest thing about today?" and "Was anybody scared today?"

Answering such queries - speaking clearly and properly in front of others - is a key component of the program.

"When I first came here I was the shyest guy," said Francisco Santos, 17, who felt comfortable speaking only at home. He now loves teaching large groups of children.

"The program is based on marine science, but they just use that as a base for you to jump to public speaking and workplace skills," he said. "It's so positive, you can't help but be sucked into learning."

Santos is now senior class president at Camden Academy Charter High School.

Interacting with people is one thing. Interacting with other life-forms is something else entirely.

"Ewwww," screeches Priscilla Quintana, 13, who walks away with her hands in the air after a sea star curls around her fingers. "I don't want to touch it anymore!"

Ross is up next, taking his turn practicing to be the teacher as Don Wittrock, who runs the explorers program, mimics questions that a precocious 5-year-old camper might ask: "It's got an eye. Can it see me?"

"They only see shadows, light and dark," Ross responds.

Later, sitting in the aquarium classroom, which has ceiling-to-floor windows that face the Philadelphia skyline, Ross is captivated by a lesson on a new animal.

"We're going on a journey back in time, to the New Jersey Shore 500 million years ago," says James Sannino, a CAUSE graduate with a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Before all the stuff we had now, we had this guy, a horseshoe crab."

Naturally, Ross jumps at the chance to hold the crab.

"I am extremely excited to get to the beach," he says, staring at the shelled creature squirming in his hands.