Hancock College student Anthony Gallegos got paid to extract and examine lizard brains last summer.

Gallegos, a 20-year-old Santa Maria resident, worked on the research project with professors and graduate students at Cal Poly for 12 weeks, gaining valuable field internship experience to pursue his biology degree.

His experience, and others like it, are made possible through the Bridges to the Baccalaureate program, a partnership between Hancock and Cal Poly that aims to get more minority students to transfer to earn science degrees and go into science-related careers.

“I want to be a neurosurgeon,” Gallegos said Friday, shortly before he presented his research project to a packed room on Hancock’s Santa Maria campus.

“I’ve just always been interested in the brain. Doing this project made me even more interested in the topic. I’m just really grateful.”

Three fellow students also presented their hands-on science experiences last summer through the program, which was created in 2008 when the colleges were awarded the $848,600, five-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.

Since the program began, 22 Bridges scholars successfully have participated in the program, and nine of those students have transferred to four-year universities, including Cal Poly, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego and UC Davis.

Program enrollment has increased every year — starting with two scholars in 2009 up to 14 last summer — but organizers say they still are accepting applications for next summer.

Eligible students must plan to enroll at Hancock the upcoming fall, intend to transfer to a four-year university to study in a specific science field, have a minimum 2.7 GPA and be a member of an underrepresented minority as defined by NIH.

“It is designed to encourage and equip students from underrepresented minorities ... to go into biomedical and behavioral health fields” that are dominated by white people, said Len Miyahara, director of the Bridges program at Hancock.

“The real key is that we offer paid internships. It gives them a leg up. This kind of levels the playing field.”

Brianna Arreola, a second-year Hancock student, researched emotional suppression for her Bridges project, which fits nicely with her psychology major and plan to pursue a career as a psychologist after graduating from UC Irvine.

“I was working with grad students,” said Arreola, a Nipomo resident. “Community college students don’t get this opportunity.”