In my experience, pizza and the flu are not a happy combination. Pepperoni and vomit have just never struck me as a natural pairing. I’ve always assumed that everyone else shared this opinion. But apparently I’ve been deluding myself, because during a recent lunch, forty students packed themselves into science teacher Ms. Agatsuma’s classroom to eat pizza and listen to a lecture on killer influenza, presented by Garfield’s Science Café.

Science Café is a club established this year by Ms. Agatsuma and a group of students, with sponsorship from the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research, which Café members refer to as “NWABR” (rhymes with clobber). Each month it hosts a lunchtime seminar on a topic of its student organizers’ choice. Its goal: to promote interest in scientific careers. Its membership: juniors who took Agatsuma’s genetics class last year, underclassmen whose teachers offer extra credit for attending, and students of any grade who happen to be interested in biology. Its level of success, according to junior Cezanne Camacho, an organizer: not half bad.

“It’s usually pretty crowded,” she said. “The last one was really good – it was on post-traumatic nightmares. People seemed to be interested. There were a lot of questions.”

Camacho herself attends because she’s looking at a career as a scientist. She already has family connections in the field. “My uncle’s involved in bioscience, and I thought it’d be cool,” she explained.

Other members have similar motives. “Because I had taken genetics last year, I got an email from Ms. Agatsuma saying, ‘Are you interested?’” said junior Amandine Lee, another organizer. “I thought that yes, I would like to earn some leadership experience and get involved.”

The idea that those accomplishments might help her get into college did cross her mind. However, she says, it was at most a secondary consideration. “[Bioscience] is something that I’m actually interested in,” she said.

Lee acknowledges that the club is a work in progress. The January presentation was disorganized and rushed. Because it took so long to serve people food, the guest lecturer only spoke for fifteen minutes. “This is our first year, so we’re still kind of sounding things out,” she said.

Lee is proud of the fact that Science Café has been able to draw an audience beyond just white APP students. “It has a core of people who obviously aren’t ashamed of being into science,” she said. “But most of the participants are sophomores and juniors, and since sophomore sciences aren’t as segregated, there’s more diversity.” She suspects, however, that some people show up just for the food or the extra credit.

Karen Beaty, who attended the most recent Science Café, can confirm Lee’s suspicion. “People were saying as they were waiting, ‘I’m just here for the pizza,’” Beaty said. As someone who takes science seriously – she’s been known to study physics in her free time – she found this frustrating.

However, even if some of the participants aren’t as into it as she is, Beaty still appreciates the opportunity to expand her scientific knowledge. “It’s really cool to see a presentation by someone who’s actually an expert,” she said.