State Educators Honor NCI

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At the Maryland State Department of Education ceremony were (from l): Melissa Porter, OSO administrative manager; Dr. Nadya Tarasova of the Center for Cancer Research; Julie Hartman, OSO program analyst; Dr. Kristine Pearl, supervisor of career and technology education from Frederick County Public Schools; Dr. Karen B. Salmon, Maryland superintendent of schools; Norm McGaughey, coordinator for career and technology education, FCPS; 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 from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County; and Dr. Lynne M. Gilli, Maryland assistant superintendent of schools.

The Maryland State Department of Education recently honored the National Cancer Institute with a 2017 award of excellence in career and technology education during a ceremony in Baltimore. NCI was nominated by Frederick County Public Schools as 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 acting director Dr. Doug Lowy. “Our laboratories are vibrant places of important investigation, in part, because of students—undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows—lending their ideas and enthusiasm to our science,” 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 a quarter century, has served more than 1,000 students from Frederick and surrounding communities who spend an intensive summer program working with mentors in research laboratories and in administrative functions—positions the students continue through their senior years.

Komschlies thanked the mentors who are at the heart of the Kirsten 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.