When Martha Glasco was growing up in North Philadelphia, she said, her opportunities were limited.
So when a teacher told Glasco — now an adult with a bright child of her own — about a new program that aimed to give promising Philadelphia kids six years of medical-school education with an eye toward careers in healthcare, Glasco was thrilled.
This month, Glasco’s daughter Madison Miller slipped a white coat over her shoulders, one of 32 Philadelphia seventh graders chosen for the initial class of Temple University’s Lang Medical Scholars Program. The 12-year-old, a student at E.W. Rhodes Elementary at 22nd and Clearfield Streets, will spend weekends and summers learning about systems of the body, completing internships, and engaging in rigorous college prep.
“This is a big deal,” said Glasco, who dreams of buying Madison scrubs and a stethoscope, tangible evidence of her place in Lang Scholars and the doors it could open.
“The passion around this, the mission is just — talent abounds and opportunity does not, right?” said Barbara Klock, the program director and its architect. Lang, she said, aims to change that for its students.
A long-held vision
Klock carried the idea of the Lang Scholars around for years, through a career as a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pediatrician and the Philadelphia School District’s chief medical officer.
Klock, who grew up in Philadelphia’s working-class Juniata Park section, was mentored by Eugene Lang at Swarthmore College. Lang, a businessperson and philanthropist, famously promised a class of Harlem sixth graders that he would pay for their college educations if they graduated from high school.
Lang and Klock kept in touch after her Swarthmore graduation, and on one chance encounter at 30th Street Station in the 1990s, Lang mentioned to Klock that he was launching something he was really excited about.
“He said, ‘I have this idea for a program, but the kids start really young.’ He was always, ‘If you’re going to do something, it’s got to be the best,’ and for him, the best would be going to medical school,” Klock said.
That program, the Lang Youth Medical Program, has been thriving in New York for decades. Klock admired it from afar, and, sometimes, up close.
“I would go on Saturdays and see the program with the dream of bringing it to Philadelphia,” she said.
Klock decided it was time to go for her own version of that program in 2024. She reached out to Mitchell Morgan, chair of Temple’s board of trustees, via e-mail.
“I said, ‘I have this program. I would love to bring it to Temple,’” Klock said. “I wanted to do this with Temple because of where Temple is located, Temple’s mission and vision, and they really do what they say they do.”
She expected she might hear from Morgan within three weeks. Instead, she had a response, and a connection to Lewis Katz School of Medicine dean Amy Goldberg, by the end of that day.
In short order, the program was off and running, with Temple’s backing and philanthropic support, including some funding from Lang’s private foundation.
Klock pounded the pavement in the 2025-26 school year, reaching out to every Philadelphia school she could connect with — district, charter, private — to ask: Can I come talk to your sixth graders about an idea? Thirty-five schools opened the door for Klock to make presentations.
She didn’t ask counselors to recommend kids; she feared she would get only straight-A students and student council presidents. Those were fine, but she also wanted the bright-but-bored kids, the ones who were curious about science and life but maybe had hit a few bumps along the way.
Klock hoped to bring in 20 Lang scholars for the inaugural class. Nearly 14 times that number applied, and those who made it to the interview round flat-out wowed her, Klock said. She ended up getting permission to build a class of 32 — 22 girls and 10 boys — and will grow a grade every year.
The program’s aim is not to produce a class full of doctors. It is to produce a class full of curious and confident learners grounded in an academic medical setting. If some enter the medical field, Klock would be delighted, but that is not the main objective.
“These are kids who are so eager to learn,” Klock said. “They want to be with other students who are eager to learn. They are incredibly curious. They ask, ‘why?’ and ‘what if?’ What I want to do is give them the chance to continue to ask, ‘why?’ and ‘what if?,’ no matter what.”
‘This is serious’
Glasco was tipped off about the program by a teacher friend.
Madison first expressed her desire to become a doctor at age 3. Her preschool teacher has a photo of Madison holding a sign stating her career goal.
“She wants to be in the medical field, and I used to be in the medical field, so it’s actually perfect,” said Glasco, who used to work as an EMT and a medical assistant and is now a paraprofessional in a suburban school district.
It’s not far from her North Philadelphia house to Temple’s medical school, Madison said, but walking into the Medical Education and Research Building on North Broad Street felt like a different world in some ways.
Going to the interview was “very exciting,” Madison said, “but I was also very nervous. There were a lot of windows, and I could see everyone.”
When she got the word that she was a Lang Scholar, Madison was thrilled.
“My teacher was really excited, too, because he knew I was going to be in the medical field soon — kind of in medical school, like college,” Madison said. “My friends were really excited because they knew they were going to have a medical friend.”
Madison and the other Lang Scholars received their professional white coats to kick off the program on Sept. 19. They will begin their studies Oct. 3. Klock will teach the biweekly courses on the human body, health equity, public health, and more.
Over the years, the students will take trips, work at paid internships, sit in SAT prep courses, and receive help with college applications — all for free. They will dive into the health issues facing their communities, and have access to the same labs and facilities as Temple medical students.
Glasco cannot wait to drop Madison off for her first day of class as a Lang Scholar.
“I’m going to be on her really hard about this, because this is serious,” Glasco said. “I want her to get all the knowledge she can, and maintain it, so she can go further in whatever medical field she decides to do in the future.”
