IRVINE : Company Donates to Science Program

American Honda Foundation has donated $100,000 to UC Irvine’s special summer science program for low-income Latino children, university officials said.

The bilingual program, titled “Kids Investigating and Discovering Science (KIDS),” was launched three summers ago with 30 children from local migrant worker families. A previous $100,000 donation from American Honda allowed the university to open the program to about 60 youngsters from kindergarten through eighth grade.

This summer, students from the Santa Ana and Irvine Unified School districts will concentrate on medicine and the human body, according to Jan West, a postgraduate researcher and associate director of the two-week program.

“The students will be researching various aspects of the body and nutrition, organ functions, how energy in food is quantified, the medicinal aspect of plants and how antibiotics are isolated,” West said.

In addition to American Honda’s second major donation, the program also has received contributions of money and materials this year from Chevron, Southern California Edison, the National Geographic Society and Apple Computer.

“The biggest joy for kids is discovery, to be able to say, ‘I found this!’ ” said program founder Eloy Rodriguez, a professor of developmental and cell biology at UCI. “In the KIDS program, we are breaking down the myth of science and showing it to young students in terms they understand and appreciate.”