"Dr. Howser? Doogie Howser, M.D.? This is your beeper service. Wanda called and said she's dumping you for a college guy. Your insurance company wants to speak to you about that Walkman you left in Mr. Jones' abdomen last week — he says he hates metal. Oh, and call your mother — she says what is she, your slave, or can't you put your own gym shorts in the hamper? And she wants to know if you drank your milk this morning?"

Preposterous, you say? The travails of a teenaged physician too trying for a TV show? Maybe. But by this time next year, casting agents will know where to look if the kid who plays the Doog gets out of line and needs to be replaced.

In September, the Lincoln High School Medical Magnet will have relocated to a new $25 million building near the 275-bed USC University Hospital under construction by National Medical Enterprises. Within two years, according to principal Rosamaria Hernandez, there may be a whole gaggle of Doogie Howsers roaming the school halls in lab coats, as well as a full adolescent complement of some 1,800 future nurses, medical technicians, therapists, doctors' assistants and other potential members of the health care professions.

To date, USC's involvement with the Lincoln Medical Magnet School could be seen in such programs as STAR — the Student Tutoring and Research program, which gave a small group of Lincoln students in their senior year a taste of the health care and biomedical research professions they ultimately hoped to pursue by bringing them into laboratories at the School of Medicine or the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center. That program was headed at USC by Kelvin Davies, an associate professor of biochemistry in the School of Pharmacy's Institute for Toxicology.

According to John Hisserich, associate vice president for health affairs and an associate clinical professor of preventive medicine, that program will likely be expanded as the new school fills up. In addition, short courses now offered in lab safety will be expanded to handle the influx of new students.

"We are also working," says Hisserich, "to develop interest organizations which would expose students to aspects of the health care professions they may not be aware of. Our faculty will assist in courses offering introductions to health care careers. Our library people have been working with theirs to arrange to have select numbers of students — we don't have the facilities to cope with all 1,800 — become familiar with our resources. We have also been discussing ways to assist them in the development of their own collection, and will provide excess medical journals and texts."

Lincoln Medical Magnet is one of some 86 "magnet centers" in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Magnet schools, says Hernandez, adhere to district curricula requirements, but may have unique orientations or methodologies. Thus, elementary magnets may be geared to gifted children, to those with artistic inclinations, or to those who would best thrive in a program stressing academic fundamentals. High school magnet centers, such as the Los Angeles Zoo magnet, which stresses animal care professions, prepare students for careers and vocations in a particular field from the outset.

The Lincoln Medical Magnet was founded in 1981 at the Lincoln High School campus in East Los Angeles (also near the Health Sciences campus) with a student body of 60. Although the school posted no special entry requirements, courses were oriented toward an interest in the health-care professions.

It became clear early on, says Hernandez, that the school would best fulfill its mandate if it were permitted to grow. However, circumstances dictated several moves over the years, once to some bungalows on the site where the new school is presently being erected (at the corner of Charlotte and Cornwell streets) and, most recently, to the grounds of nearby Wilson High School.

The decision to build what is virtually the first new high school complex erected within Los Angeles County in two decades was largely the result of the University's commitment to building a new University hospital. The school district agreed to cede land for the hospital in return for assistance in getting the new school built. Eventually, the University, NME and the Board of Education embarked on a joint venture to do precisely that.

"Our interest," says Hisserich on behalf of the University, "really is community outreach. We are a major and growing presence on the East Side, especially with the new hospital under construction, and remain committed to benefiting the community."

Sheldon Teitelbaum