The Maryland State Department of Education ceremony. From left to right: Melissa Porter, OSO administrative manager; Dr. Nadya Tarasova from the Center for Cancer Research; Julie Hartman, OSO program analyst; Dr. Kristine Pearl, supervisor of career and technology education, Frederick County Public Schools; Dr. Karen B. Salmon, Maryland superintendent of schools; Norm McGaughey, coordinator for career and technology education, Frederick County Public Schools; Dr. Kristin Komschlies, OSO acting director; Dr. James Cherry, OSO assistant project officer; Marsha Nelson-Duncan, OSO education program specialist; Dr. Anne Spence, professor of the practice, mechanical engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and Dr. Lynne M. Gilli, Maryland assistant superintendent of schools.
The Maryland State Department of Education honored the National Cancer Institute with a 2017 award of excellence in career and technology education during an April 25 ceremony in Baltimore.
NCI was nominated by Frederick County Public Schools as an outstanding business partner in secondary education for its Werner H. Kirsten Student Intern Program. Dr. Kristin Komschlies, acting director of the Office of Scientific Operations, accepted the award on behalf of NCI’s acting director, Dr. Doug Lowy.
“Our laboratories are vibrant places of important investigation, in part, because of students—undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows—lending their ideas and enthusiasm to our science,” Dr. Komschlies said. “Thanks to the Werner H. Kirsten Student Intern Program, which you honor today, NCI’s scientific education and training extend to high school students.”
The program, now in existence for more than 25 years, has served over 1,000 high school students from Frederick and surrounding communities, who spend an intensive summer program working with mentors in research laboratories and administrative functions—positions the students continue through their senior years.
In her remarks, Dr. Komschlies thanked the mentors who are at the heart of the program: staff members from the Office of Scientific Operations, investigators from the Center for Cancer Research, and scientific staff from the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.
NCI was one of nine organizations honored with glass trophies presented by Dr. Karen B. Salmon, Maryland’s superintendent of schools, and Dr. Lynne M. Gilli, assistant superintendent.