College of San Mateo helped propel Venter to greatness

For countless students (currently, roughly 2.2 million of them are enrolled on these campuses) stretching back more than a century, these affordable schools are a boon and a lifeline designed to provide bigger and better (and practical) opportunities going forward, no matter a young person’s career goals.

A prime example: J. Craig Venter. He credited the College of San Mateo with what amounted to an important and timely chance to rethink and reset his academic journey way back in the early 1970s. It paid off big-time and in historic fashion.

Venter, who passed away last week at the age of 79 as he battled to overcome a serious illness, became what many have described as one of the founding fathers of genomic research.

The pioneering work of his research team produced a comprehensive sequencing of the human genome in 2000. The accomplishment — and subsequent groundbreaking research in that field — is regarded as one of mankind’s momentous scientific breakthroughs.

Venter, who grew up in Millbrae, was interviewed by CSM on the occasion of the school’s centennial in 2022. He was quoted as saying that his earlier Mills High School academic record was far from stellar; admittedly unmotivated and unfocused, he said he achieved barely a C average overall during his years on the Mills campus on Murchison Drive.

He served in the U.S. Army as a medical corpsman during the Vietnam War after graduating from Mills. On his return to the Peninsula, he enrolled at CSM. That’s when things began to change.

“CSM is where I learned how to learn,” he said. “I learned how to discipline myself. I had teachers who were nothing but supportive. I don’t think I would have gotten that support at a four-year university.”

Venter went on from CSM to the University of California, San Diego, and, later, wound up creating his own private company that performed key (and sometimes controversial) research that led to the human genome findings and tenets of what later became known as synthetic biology with far-reaching applications, especially in life-saving and life-altering medicine.

One of Venter’s colleagues, upon learning of Venter’s death, described him as “one of the most extraordinary scientific minds of our time.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment, given the list of his achievements.

One thing is clear: He was a true visionary and most assuredly one of the most consequential individuals ever produced here on the Peninsula

THIS TEEN IS GOING PLACES: Worried about today’s teens? Relax. Chill. We have a hopeful antidote for you. A junior at San Mateo High School won the grand prize in this spring’s Golden Gate Science Fair and first place in the Physics and Engineering category. She later captured a third-place award at the prestigious California Science and Engineering Fair. Violet MacAvoy, who is also an accomplished musician and a talented athlete at the 124-year-old school, grabbed the impressive state honor in the Applied Mechanics category. This was the daunting title of her contest entry: “Tough Turbines: Exploring Properties of Graphene and SiC Reinforced Epoxy Coatings for Hydropower in Untapped Flows.” Whew. And you thought your long-ago prep class in Geometry I was a challenging brain-bender.

EL RANCHO’S DOLPHINETTES: With the planned demise of Millbrae’s El Rancho Inn fast upon us, this might be an appropriate moment to take a brief look at one of the hostelry’s more intriguing attractions back in its heyday. The Mermaid Room was a bar that featured a large window into the depths of the inn’s modest swimming pool. On occasion, that aquatic portal would feature comely females paddling and diving amidst the chlorinated bubbles in full view of those sipping adult beverages on the other side of the glass. It was a human aquarium of sorts. The hotel’s lithe lovelies were known as the Dolphinettes, quasi-mermaids in bathing suits if you will. Water wings were optional.