Project Success Reunion Dinner
MENTATIONS, Volume XV May 2003
by
Julia Spears
Director of K-12 Programs, Office for Diversity and Community Partnership
|
On January 6, 2003, over 25 Project Success alumni/ae, mentors and program supporters brought in the New Year at the annual Project Success Alumni Reunion Dinner held in the Faculty Room of Gordon Hall at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Project Success: Opening the Door to Biomedical Careers is the Minority Faculty Development Program's (MFDP) eight-week summer research program for high school students residing in either Boston or Cambridge. Throught Project Success, approximately 15 students are matched with an HMS faculty advisor for a hands-on, mentored, paid, research experience each summer. Project Success is the flagship of the K-12 programs that run under the aegis of the Office for Diversity and Community Partnership. Started in 1993, Project Success is celebrating its tenth year with an alum database of nearly 100 students, 99% of whom have gone on to college, and several of whom have enrolled in medical, dental or graduate schools. The reunion dinner provides the students with an opportunity to reconnect with other participants and with their advisors. As in past years, students were very pleased to see each other again, catch up on news, and network with other Project Success alums and with HMS faculty advisors. This year's reunion dinner program featured remarks from two students and a professor. Laura Martine, a freshman at Harvard College and one of the few Project Success participants who has completed four years in the program, worked with four different HMS faculty members: in 1999 she worked with Lorene Leiter, Ph. D., who was at the time a Research Fellow in Hematology at Brigham and Women's Hospital; in 2000, with Adrienne Randolph, M.D., in Anesthesiology at Children's Hospital Boston; in 2001, with the late Douglas Richardson, M.D., M.B.A., Associate Professor of Pediatrics, HMS, Assistant Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and Associate Chief for Academic Affairs in Neonatology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and in 2002, with Robert Sackstein, M.D., Ph. D., Associate Professor of Dermatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Amal Osman, a senior from City on a Hill School, participated in the summer of 2002, working with Richard Hodin, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital; Amal also won an award from the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center for her extensive volunteer work in the Somali community. Jean Lee, Ph. D., Associate Professor of Medicine at Channing Laboratory, and a devoted advisor to Project Success students during the past eight years, spoke about the young researchers with whom she has worked every summer since 1995. Thank you Dr. Lee! The dinner culminated with a slide show of pictures from the past ten summers, featuring many participants and their advisors. |