On May 2nd, we had the joy of presenting Dr. Andrew Eyre with the EXPLO Service Award — our way of recognizing someone who has given so much of himself to this organization over so many years. From his earliest days as a college student working with us during the summer, through his current role helping design and teach our medical courses, Andrew has been a constant presence: shaping programs, forging connections within the medical community, and bringing his expertise and genuine warmth to our students studying medicine. The certificate we gave him speaks of someone "thoughtful in his approach, generous with his time, and unwavering in his loyalty."
Andrew is the Executive Medical Director of the STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where he is also a practicing emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Among the many teaching honors he has received, he is a recipient of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Bernard Lown Award for Excellence in Teaching, a distinction that will surprise no one who has spent time learning from him.
I sat down with Andrew — moments before he boarded a flight to China for a medical training trip — for the kind of wide-ranging conversation that always leaves me energized. What follows is drawn from that exchange.
I started by asking what keeps him coming back to EXPLO year after year. His answer brought a smile to my face.
"EXPLO makes the actual teaching a priority," he said. "There are lots of summer programs where people know their content, but they're not high-quality teachers. At EXPLO, the design is to make learning fun — not just to transmit information, but to get students interested and enthusiastic and excited." He talked about being surrounded by peers who want to immerse themselves in new ideas, and faculty who teach with the newest technologies. "It's a place," he said simply, "where they make learning magical."
We aim for that and it was wonderful to hear that we actually deliver on it.
Then I asked him something I've always been curious about: given that he now teaches Harvard medical students and residents — people who are deep into their professional training — why does he think a medical program for 12-to-14-year-olds is worthwhile? How substantive can it really be?
His answer surprised me.
Every year, EXPLO students visit STRATUS, and every year Andrew says they impress him. "Sometimes I think more advanced learners get so overly-detailed, so focused on the esoteric, that they miss the big picture," he explained. Older students start worrying about genetics and pharmacotherapies — and lose sight of what's actually in front of them. EXPLO students? They focus on the patient. They figure out the diagnosis. They get the treatment right. "They focus on the important stuff," Andrew said, "and they have fun doing it."
That's not a small thing. That's actually the heart of good medicine.
Andrew traces his own path back to a sixth-grade CPR class — a hands-on experience that planted a seed. From there came lifeguarding, then an EMT course, then shadowing in high school. The steps fell into place, but the spark came first. "Even as a younger person, I could see that I can do something valuable. I can gain skills that are meaningful." That early sense of capability, he believes, can set a lifetime in motion.
This is precisely what we're trying to do at EXPLO — and it's worth being clear about what we're not trying to do. We're not trying to professionalize children or load them up with pressure to optimize their college applications. We're trying to help young people find their spark. Whatever it is. Andrew put it beautifully: giving an adolescent the chance to explore something they're genuinely passionate about is "a huge gift." It's one of the first times they get to choose — not because someone told them to, but because they want to. "It's a way they can start exploring on their own and creating their own identity."
I mentioned to Andrew a book I've been thinking about a lot — David Yeager's work on what motivates young people. Yeager, a neuroscientist at UT Austin, writes about how adolescents are wired to be exquisitely sensitive to status, to agency, to being taken seriously. And yet our culture often does the opposite — it shuts adolescents out of meaningful experiences precisely when they most need to be let in. Andrew nodded at all of this. "If you track people back to where their career inspirations came from," he said, "it really is at this middle school level — where they went from here's the set curriculum to you actually get a choice now."
Our conversation turned to the future of education, and this is where Andrew's perspective as both a physician and a parent came through most clearly. The amount of new information in the world is growing at an exponential rate, he observed. That means the most important thing we can teach is not content — it's how to learn. How to ask questions. How to experiment. How to apply knowledge rather than simply memorize it. He referenced Bloom's Taxonomy, the classic educational framework that places understanding at the base of a pyramid, with application, analysis, and creation above it. Too much of what passes for education, he said, is stuck at the bottom — can you absorb it and give it back? The real question is: can you use it?
I've had the good fortune of visiting STRATUS a number of times, trying out the simulation equipment myself — practicing a colonoscopy, working through a heart stent placement. Each time, I come away with a renewed conviction about what immersive, experiential learning can do. Andrew said it best: "If I ask you to think about a moment in your life where you learned something important, almost nobody is going to tell me about something they read in a book. They're going to tell me about an experience or a moment." That's what simulation creates. That's what EXPLO creates.
The certificate we gave Andrew closes with this: EXPLO is profoundly grateful for the years of commitment, care, and passion he has poured into this organization and the lives it touches. Sitting across from him, listening to him talk about the magic of learning and the importance of finding your spark, I felt that gratitude acutely. Andrew didn't just help us build a medical program. He helped us understand, more deeply, what we are actually trying to do.
Find the spark. Trust the kid. Watch what happens.
Dr. Andrew Eyre is Medical Director of the STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a practicing emergency medicine physician, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. A recipient of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Bernard Lown Award for Excellence in Teaching, he is also the 2026 recipient of the EXPLO Service Award.