Over the past 12 years, Patty Phelps has mentored more than 250 students in her role as faculty advisor for the Amgen Scholars Program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Among those students is: a young woman who came from the University of Washington in bioengineering and is now pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego; a hard-working young man who returned to UCLA for graduate school in neuroscience; and the wonderful UCLA students who each year welcomed those from out-of-town and developed long-term friendships.