Student Profiles: Second Class 2002 - 2003
Jessica Baer graduated magna cum laude from Georgia State University with a degree in Spanish and a minor in Journalism. While at Georgia State she was the Arts & Entertainment editor for the University newspaper, was the content editor for Georgia State 's online magazine, and was a DJ for WRAS-Atlanta radio station. She also interned at CNN en espanol. Between high school and college, Jessica danced at the San Francisco Ballet School . Before coming to Johns Hopkins, Jessica spent the summer in Ecuador with Child Family Health International where she observed doctors on rotation in four different hospitals. While at Hopkins she did a medical tutorial with Dr. Shubin who runs a managed care pediatric clinic for inner-city children at the Children's Health Center, Mercy Family Care. Jessica will be attending the New York Medical College.
Sylvia Birba-Cartwright graduated with a combined degree in Business and Finance from EDHEC Business School in Lille ( France ) and the London School of Economics ( England ) in 1993. Her career in investment banking took her to Paris, Amsterdam and London where she worked as a trader and then as a business of St Mary's Hospital in London. Sylvia participated in a clinical tutorial in neurology and developmental medicine, with Dr Alex Hoon of the Kennedy Krieger Institute. She will be attending the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in the fall.
Kathleen Bronson graduated from Villanova University in 1998 with a degree in Nursing. While at Villanova, Kathleen led fifteen students and faculty on a service trip to Veracruz, Nicaragua to construct the foundation for two classrooms, work and observe the health care for village residents and subsequently establish a U.S. physician medical supply donation to resource the Veracruz health care clinic. She also led a Habitat for Humanity service trip to McAllen, Texas and Progresso, Mexico. Kathleen served as a Resident Assistant, weekly volunteer at a North Philadelphia Homeless Clinic, chairperson for Community Outreach of Villanova, and Nursing Senate Secretary. Kathleen was awarded the Elaine McCaully Scholarship for clinical excellence. Since graduation, she has worked as a surgical critical care nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital while also volunteering at inner city health clinics and soup kitchens. Kathleen was awarded the Johns Hopkins 2000 Martin Luther King Jr Award for outstanding community service and the Award for Clinical Excellence in Nursing. She has also done health care volunteer work in Calle Real , El Salvador and Gordon Towne, Jamaica. She has done tutorials with Dr. Michelle Petri at the School of Medicine and Dr. Jean Nachega at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Kathleen will be attending the Michigan State University School of Medicine.
Johns Hopkins University graduate of May 2002, Timothy Browne, majored in Writing with a minor in Computer Science. Tim has served as a volunteer for the Public Justice Center of Baltimore and the Children's Center of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. During his junior year he lived in Alicante, Spain, where he studied Spanish literature and language at La Universidad de Alicante. He has won awards for poetry and continues to work with Hopkins writing professors while enrolled in the Post-Bac Premed Program. Tim did an internship over intersession in physical rehabilitation medicine at Northwest Hospital. He did a research project to study pain management with Dr. Mark Young at Northwest Hospital , and did research this past year at Emory University . He will be enrolling in the first year class at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Mohamad Bydon graduated with High Honors from Dartmouth College . He was a Senior Fellow with concentrations in Film, English, and Near Eastern Studies. Mohamad founded "Shamis," a political group at Dartmouth , to raise awareness about global issues and promote tolerance among different religious groups. His creation of the Shi'I passion play, (on video) and other commemorative events of South Lebanon, is a significant and original contribution after studying and doing extensive fieldwork in South Lebanon. After working with the Red Cross in refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon , he decided to pursue a medical career. He did a tutorial with Dr. Cindy Schwartz studying the effects of cancer treatments on the heart of Hodgkin's patients in pediatric oncology. Mo will be entering the Yale University School of Medicine in the fall.
Melissa Coleman received her bachelor's degree in 2000 from St. John's College, Annapolis, MD where she was captain of the women's soccer team and worked in the music library. She received a Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Fellowship to conduct genetics research for a summer at the National Institutes of Health. With support from the Fogarty Foundation, Melissa designed and managed a study in Mali to assess the burden of placental malaria. She also spent seven months in Peru to develop a test to detect the presence of the trichomonas vaginalis parasite in patients. Before beginning her post-bac studies, Melissa worked as a technician in a medical reference testing laboratory. She did a medical tutorial in pediatrics with Dr. Shubin. Melissa will be attending the Harvard University School of Medicine.
Sarah Eby graduated magna cum laude in 2002 from Kenyon College where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Sarah earned highest honors for her senior honors thesis about the Borderlands concept in the writing of Latinas. While at Kenyon she was an assistant teacher of introductory Spanish, a tutor at the college writing center, elected to the senior class committee, secretary of Circle K International and served on numerous community service clubs. She has interned with a general surgeon, cosmetic surgeon, pediatrician, and has spent a summer volunteering in the ER at a low-income hospital in Los Angeles. Sarah studied developmental disabilities with projects in autism, mental retardation and obsessive-compulsive disorder in a tutorial project with Dr. Marco Grados of Johns Hopkins. She will be attending the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Gabriel Flaxman, a Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society member, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a major in History. He is an Emergency Medical Technician and worked as a ski patroller while in college. After graduation in 2001, Gabriel spent a season in Australia working as a patroller at Perisher Blue. He did a tutorial with Dr. Georgia Vogelsang in the Hopkins Oncology Department, studying the the controversy surrounding bone marrow transplant as a possible treatment for breast cancer. Gabe will be attending the Drexel University School of Medicine.
Jim Harper, a Phi Beta Kappa, Golden Key National Honor Society graduated from Rice University with a major in music theory. While taking up to 20 credits a semester, Jim amassed a near perfect GPA, concurrently with being involved in numerous operas, musicals, a capella group, orchestra, teaching voice and piano. He served as a student assistant at the Brown Fines Arts Library, a recording engineer at Shepherd School of Music, transcribed major orchestral work for the Foundation of Modern Music, and was coordinator for Orientation week at the Jones College, Rice University. While finishing his thesis at Rice, Jim taught voice and piano two nights per week. After graduation, he began volunteering as a patient representative in the Emergency Department of Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. This led to a paid position in the Admissions Department of the same hospital as a bed coordinator and patient registrar until he enrolled in JHU's Post-Bac Program. Jim spent an extra year at Johns Hopkins University to do stem cell research with Dr. Douglas Kerr, in the Neurology Department at the School of Medicine. He is the first author of a paper published in the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jim will be doing a combined MD-PhD program at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis this fall.
Dustin Hayward graduated from UC Berkeley with high honors in May of 2002 with a degree in Psychology and an emphasis in Neuroscience. While at Berkeley, he conducted cognitive neuroscience research under the guidance of two neurologists. As a Hopkins Post-Bac he worked with Dr. Jeffrey Rothstein studying aspects of neurodegeneration therapies and transporters in a medical tutorial arrangement. Dustin will be a member of the first year class at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in the fall.
After receiving a B.S. degree in Foreign Service with a concentration in Science and Technology in International Affairs from Georgetown University in 1998, Scott Kaiser , spent six months assisting Dr. Timothy Beach on a grant funded archaeological research project in Dortyol, Turkey. From 1999-2002, Scott was Manager for U.S. Adult Accessories Merchandise Planning for Gap, Inc. at the corporate headquarters in San Francisco. Scott conducted laboratory research in cardiac surgery with Dr. William Baumgartner. His project included stem cell research, the study of neurological injury in cardiac surgery, transplantation investigation and organ preservation, as well as observing in the clinical operating room. Scott will be attending the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis .
Caroline Lawler graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 2002 with a degree in Economics and certificates in both Chinese Language and East Asian Studies. While exploring other non-medical related interests in college, including working in a consulting firm in Boston and studying Chinese in an intensive language immersion program in Beijing, China, Caroline continued to pursue her interest in medicine and public health throughout her Princeton career. She remained active on Princeton’s Student Health Advisory Board for three years, serving as treasurer her junior and senior years. She also spent a summer doing cardiac research at the Saint Vincent’s Medical Center Cardiac Services in Connecticut. During her Post-Bac year, Caroline participated in a clinical research tutorial with Dr. Nikos Vlahos in Gynecology and Obstetrics. She will be attending medical school at the University of Connecticut .
Fraser Lawrence graduated from St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM in May 2002 with a thesis on the biological basis of ethics. His volunteer activities include working as an EMT with a state search and rescue team, a homeless shelter, family clinic for low income patients, and hospital intensive care unit as well as human rights related work with Amnesty International. Teaching has also been a strong part of Fraser's past, working part time as a community seminar leader, and also tutoring and leading study groups for middle and high school students in chemistry, social studies, and English. He was awarded the Thorne Scholarship for premedical study over the summer of 2001. After graduating, Fraser did international service in the war torn area of eastern Sri Lanka with Medecins Sans Frontiers, where he worked closely with a trauma surgery team. For the past two years, he has been involved in a vaccine development project at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and taking courses in international medicine at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Fraser will be attending the University of Chicago School of Medicine in the fall.
Erica Oberman graduated from UCLA in 1998 with a degree in Environmental Science and a concentration in Restoration Ecology and Developmental Studies. Prior to attending the Post-Bac Program, she served two and a half years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Suriname . She spent the first year in a rural village working on a potable water project and during the second year she coordinated the National Cervical Cancer campaign in Paramaribo, the capital city. Erica studied the options for preserving reproductive potential in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy with Dr. Lisa Kolp. Erica will be attending medical school at the University of California, San Francisico.
After graduating with a degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which included a semester at the American University of Paris, Ally Parnes established a successful career in advertising in New York City. Ally provided strategic direction for premier packaged goods companies while managing the development of their TV, print, and radio advertisement strategies. Ally then re-located to Santa Monica, California where she continued working for a New York-based agency. She will be attending the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Norleena Poynter graduated from the Ohio State University in 1994 with honors in the Liberal Arts. She began working as a technical translator for a software development company's European clients. Norleena then continued in the information technology field for eight years and during that time created and marketed La Solution Technique a French-English technical translation company. Most recently, she worked for Ernst & Young, LLP in their Critical Technologies division for clients such as Walt Disney World and the Coca-Cola Company. While working for E&Y, she created a Professional Women's Network Council that supported executive women's professional growth, retention and training as well as participating in various community service initiatives for women's groups in the Atlanta area. Norleena did a tutorial involving clinical research in sports medicine and orthopedic surgery with Dr. Edward McFarland. She will be attending Emory University School of Medicine.
Kim Reiss graduated with honors from Colby College in May, 2002 with a degree in Psychology and a minor in Biology. While in college she sang in "The Colbyettes," an all female a cappella group and in the Colby College Chorale. She also participated in numerous theatrical productions throughout college. Over summers, Kim did several internships in labs at Yale New Haven Hospital and a clinical internship at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She did a tutorial with Dr. Paul Blumenthal on reproductive health research projects, and worked this year as a research assistant in the Bayview Hospital Burn Center. Kim will be attending the Penn State University School of Medicine.
Kevin Stockard earned his bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Ohio State University in1989. While in school, he worked with the McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis , Missouri as a summer intern and was hired on as a full-time employee upon graduation. From 1989-1991 he worked there as an aircraft performance engineer on the AV-8B Harrier aircraft. In 1991 he changed careers into software engineering and worked for the TRIFID Corporation in St. Louis as a programmer and contractor for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), a U.S. government entity which supplies satellite imagery intelligence to all branches of the U.S. military. After completing an M.A. degree in Mathematics at Washington University in 1995, Kevin began working for British-Aerospace of North America as a software engineer and programmer, performing imagery software installations at many U.S. military installations throughout the U.S. and Western Europe . He first developed an interest in medicine while at Washington University by studying the nonlinear dynamics of cardiac arrhythmia, leading to his current interest in cardiology. Kevin has deferred his enrollment to medical school and will be attending the University of Missouri School of Medicine next year.
Zoe Unger graduated with honors from Williams College in 2002 with a major in American Studies. She was a member of the Division I Alpine Ski Team for two years and was selected as a second team All-American. Zoe tutored and ran the tutoring program at "A Better Chance House" for three years while at Williams. She also taught swimming at the community center. Zoe did a clinical tutorial with Dr. Georgia Vogelsang in the Oncology Department at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She be attending medical school at Dartmouth University .
Kirstie Wilson graduated from Smith College in May of 2002 with a double major in Psychology and Government that included emphases in clinical psychology and international relations. Kirstie was awarded membership to Psi Chi, the national psychology honor society. Active in many areas of student and community life, she was a member of the varsity soccer team, and as a peer educator in areas such as HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and sexual health. She was a liaison between her college residence and several school offices including the Residence and Dining Services and the Athletic Association. She spent her junior year in Geneva , Switzerland , where she employed her French fluency and gained the opportunity to work for the International Peace Bureau. Kirstie did a medical tutorial with Dr. Walter Kaufmann at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution's Kennedy Krieger Center. She worked on a study entitled "Lyphocytic Targets and Behavior in Fragile X." Kirstie will be attending the Georgetown University School of Medicine.
