Every summer for the last six years, A&S alum Hank Fessler ’77 welcomes a group of Cornell students to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where they join research labs and immerse themselves in a season of exploration about their future careers in medicine.
“This is a way I can contribute and really see the impact of my contribution,” Fessler said. “I can meet the students and see how this experience helps them make medical or graduate school decisions and then career decisions.”
Clara Liu ’19, who is interested in both computer science and biology, spent part of her summer developing a basic computer script to help speed up comparisons between genes and genomes.
“I was so happy when the grad student who supervised me thanked me for saving so much of his time,” Liu said. “That was when I realized how even in a basic science lab, programming skills could be used to greatly improve efficiency on certain projects.”
Staff in the Office of Undergraduate Biology combine Fessler’s gift with gifts from other alumni to enable three Cornell students to come to Johns Hopkins each summer. Fessler was also able to make some fortuitous introductions at Cornell Weill Medical Center so undergraduates could also intern there.
“As someone who wanted to pursue medicine, it was incredible walking through and being part of an institution where so much history and current groundbreaking work in medicine was taking place,” said Mark Ren ’16, an intern from the summer of 2015, who is now a first-year medical student at Johns Hopkins. “In my basic science lab, I learned about not just my particular field of interest (neurodegenerative disease on the molecular level), but also about how research and careers in research really work.”
Michelle Jin ’17, an intern from the summer of 2016, had a similar experience.
“The summer broadened my interests in medicine and I became more open to any kind of medicine,” Jin said. “The summer definitely contributed to my interest in neuroscience, but I also took time to shadow different medical specialties in psychiatry, neonatal care and cardiology.”
Fessler said intern programs like this one were less easily accessible when he was a Cornell undergrad.
“I knew I liked biology, so I majored in that, then I kind of backed into medicine,” he said. “In medical school, I had no inclination of being an academic physician or even any understanding of what that was. My goal was to be a primary care practitioner in a rural setting.”
But after attending medical school at Rutgers, then residency in a program that largely trained primary care physicians, he ended up at Hopkins for a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care and has never looked back.
“For me and a lot of people who stay in academic medicine, the constant variety makes it more exciting,” he said. “You’re focusing on research, then seeing patients, then you have a course to teach. You’re always challenged by trainees to stay at the top of your game.”
Ashley Chan ‘18 said the summer experience at Johns Hopkins provides a taste of the day-to-day life of a researcher.
“This program has exposed me to a brand-new field of research in cardioprotection and taught me many new techniques for analysis,” she said. “However, more importantly, I have learned to think, ask questions and problem solve like a scientist.”
“The summer experience definitely confirmed my interest in attending grad school and going for a PhD,” said Brady Bunkelman ’19, who’s interested in a research career. “I definitely gained confidence in my laboratory techniques and learned more about various subjects I could explore in grad school.”
“This is one of the most satisfying things I’ve done,” Fessler said. “I really enjoy sustaining my connection to the university, and the excitement of the students who come here is infectious.”
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