Multiple districts — High-schoolers from throughout Kent County got to offer up creative solutions to complex, real-world problems during the culminating event of this year’s FutureSolve initiative.
FutureSolve is a six-week internship program that invites Kent County high school students to work together to develop answers to various questions faced by molecular imaging and theranostics company BAMF Health, which is short for “Bold Advanced Medical Future.”
The program, now in its second year, is a partnership between BAMF, Kent ISD and Ferris State University. It wrapped up with a mid-July presentation event at The Collaborative Lab in Comstock Park, during which students shared the projects they’d spent the bulk of the summer working on.
‘That’s the beauty of the partnership — the college credit, the real-world experience, and the cross-curricular and cross-district connections.’
— Tom Fox, FutureSolve teacher
Creative Problem-solving
From social-media strategies and IT solutions to employee retention and operational efficiency, the 26 rising seniors who participated in the program applied their problem-solving skills to a wide variety of subject areas, sharing their work with community partners. The program included students from Grand Rapids, Rockford, East Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Kelloggsville and Catholic Central.
One group — composed of East Grand Rapids students Taj Osborne and Zack Lewis, and East Kentwood students Nermina Imamovic and Andrew Warren — was tasked with developing a plan to improve BAMF’s presence on TikTok. The group’s plan involved using shorter, snappier videos; making savvy use of trending hashtags; posting more frequently; and appealing to younger demographics.
To that end, the group used artificial intelligence to help create a rap song, with an accompanying music video, to use as an online advertisement for BAMF.
“I know the youth like rap, so it’s something we can use to keep them involved,” Andrew told the audience.
The idea for the song came to the group pretty early on in the internship, said Taj.
“We were just getting to know each other, talking, … and I was like, ‘Why don’t we just make a song?’” he said. “I’m not that talented, so I was just like, ‘I’ll just go to AI.’”
The group mashed up an existing video clip, provided by BAMF, with their AI-assisted song to create a music video for their presentation.
“We kind of just rocked with it through the rest of our group process,” Taj said.
Another group was confronted with the question of how best to allocate funds for research and development, marketing and patient care. The group members — Luke Swanson of Grand Rapids Montessori High School, Maggie Huber of Rockford High School and Adalae Reifinger and Addie Armstrong of EGR — struggled at first with how to address the question.
“At the very beginning of the project, we had a really hard time understanding what outcome we were trying to work toward, so we had to work through that,” Maggie said, adding that once the group broke the question down, things came more easily.
“We said, once you’re doing research and development, you limit it once the drug is approved by the FDA, and that’s when you continue marketing,” Maggie said. “Once you see your desired outcome with the marketing … then you quit doing that, or at least limit it, and then move on to patient care and allocate all funds toward that.”
The Value of Collaboration
Students from various groups said their experience in the FutureSolve internship helped them improve their ability to work with others.
Taj, from EGR, said the most valuable thing he learned was “design thinking, and learning and thinking with an open mind.”
Maggie had a similar takeaway.
“The biggest skill that I gained was probably collaboration,” said Maggie. “There were only two other people from my school here, so I had to learn how to work my way into a room of people that already knew each other, and try to make connections there.”
Luke said the same was true for him. He said he also learned a great deal about marketing, R&D and budgeting, “because you can’t just spend money on everything — you have to be clever about it.”
Nermina Imamovic of East Kentwood High School said that prior to the internship she wasn’t aware of what BAMF was. She said multiple people in her family have faced cancer, and she’s glad to know about how BAMF serves the community by providing screenings and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses.
“The most valuable information I learned from this is just what BAMF is, in general,” Nermina said.
Cross-curricular Connections
Tom Fox, a chemistry teacher at EGR High School who also helps run the FutureSolve program through Kent ISD, said the groups worked together beautifully, despite the daunting nature of their tasks.
“For our students, they don’t always know exactly what this is going to entail, so they come with some hesitation,” Fox said. “By the end of it … all of the students were intermingling, intermixed, talking about their presentations. … There was this emphasis by the instructors on making sure we had the groups connected between groups, not just within groups.”
In addition to working as “mini-consultants” for a thriving company, Fox said participating students also earned a stipend and three transferable credits from Ferris State University.
“That’s the beauty of the partnership — the college credit, the real-world experience, and the cross-curricular and cross-district connections.”
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