Born with spina bifida in a society that shuns disabilities, Zayne Callahan lingered for seven years in the basement of an orphanage in China before a chance encounter resulted in adoption.
Bullied so harshly in middle school that she retaliated by becoming a bully herself, Haleemat Adekoya knew she had gone too far when her parents threatened to send her to live with family back in Nigeria.
Left behind at age 5 in Honduras with a relative who would physically and emotionally abuse her, Sary Guerra is poised to become the first in her family to graduate from high school.
Guerra dreams of getting her bachelor’s degree, going to medical school and becoming a rheumatologist. Callahan is on a path to become a pediatrician, and Adekoya wants to be a child psychologist and open a center for lost youth.
They were three of six students chosen from more than 200 participants to share their life stories at the fifth annual Johns Hopkins CARES Symposium on July 26 in the Armstrong Medical Education
Building. Thousands apply for CARES (Career, Academic and Research Experiences for Students), a network of programs that provide paid internships and educational opportunities across the medical campus to Baltimore area high school students, along with undergraduate and graduate students from around the country.
More than 100 faculty members serve as mentors to the students who share a desire to pursue careers in medicine or research. For many of the high school students, CARES is an opportunity to land a fruitful summer job with exposure to careers and mentors in the medical sciences, says Gerri Cole, program manager in the Office of Student Pipeline Programs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“Many of the high school programs are two years, so the first year they are learning about different lab skills and shadowing a mentor, and the second year they are actually in labs doing the work,” said Cole, noting that a goal is to generate a homegrown workforce and improve the likelihood that local students will pursue careers in science, public health or medicine.
During the symposium, students deliver professional presentations to an audience of more than 350 attendees, bolster their academic and social confidence, and share their journeys, struggles and lessons learned in achieving their dreams while inspiring a generation of future leaders.
Poster Sessions Showcase Summer Accomplishments
Nicole Felix Velez, a junior at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, was one of the 200 students selected to showcase their summer work in one of two poster sessions.
Felix Velez’s poster, titled “Murine Kidney-on-a-Chip Model for Polycystic Kidney Disease,” showed how studying cells of polycystic kidney disease (a common genetic disorder identified by the growth of cysts in the kidneys) may lead to development of treatments. “What was amazing about this experience was that I was able to work with a microfluidic device that my mentor made himself in order to measure and study this disease,” says Velez.
Students Share Their Authentic Stories
Daniela Sedano, a student at the George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology high school, spoke of the difficulties she experienced taking care of her Spanish-speaking grandparents. At age 10 she became the sole caregiver to her grandmother, who struggled with type 2 diabetes and later stomach cancer, and her grandfather who suffered with Alzheimer’s disease. Sedano’s studies faltered as she would often need time off from school to take her grandparents to doctor appointments because they trusted only her to be their primary interpreter.
“The opportunity to be exposed to these diseases at such a young age is what pushed me further to pursue a career in medicine,” said Sedano. “Thanks to my family, I was able to find what I want to pursue in the future, either neurology because of my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s or geriatrics because of my grandmother. I also want to increase the number of bilingual physicians in Baltimore so that other kids don’t have to miss out on their childhood in order to be interpreters for their families.”