Page 45 - Gates-AnnualReport-2019

Those at the Gates Summer Internship Program believed that I would be able to thrive in your scientific community, and I can only hope that I can substantiate these beliefs throughout the rest of my career. I will always be thankful for the opportunity and believe that this program has the capability to invigorate the passion for science, medicine, and technology in the future professionals in their chosen fields.
~Kelley Ann Coakley, 2019 GSIP Intern
The Gates Center joins these students in thanking those who have made this transformative program possible. We have had Drs. Tamara Terzian, Neil Box and Enrique Torchia devote five years as founding directors and Peter and Rhondda Grant and other donors who have reveled in playing a formative role in talented young peoples’ lives by way of their generous support. We have had dedicated Gates Center member mentors and their lab staff who have taken these students under their professional wings for the summer, and often beyond as they pursue their studies and apply and are accepted to graduate and medical schools. And we have had lecturers open our students’ eyes to a myriad of possibilities beyond their individual lab experiences and projects.
Anecdotal news of our past interns is particularly heartening, especially regarding interns who have elected to pursue studies on the Anschutz Medical Campus. From our very first class of 2015, for example, Emily Paton (see photo with her former mentor on page 61) and Weston Ryan entered the University of Colorado School of Medicine in fall 2018, and their classmate Madison Baker matriculated in the Anschutz Medical Campus’s Cell Biology, Stem Cells and Development
Graduate (CSD) Program in the fall of 2017. Madison was described just this year by CSD’s former Director Bruce Appel as “a fabulous graduate student, the likes of whom we might never have been able to recruit had she not first been a GSIP intern.” Finally, 2017 GSIP Intern Alisha Eskew entered CU School of Medicine in fall 2019 (see note to her mentor Curt Freed, M.D. below). Getting news such as this along with other messages and stories included in this Education section gives us great hope for the future of this program and its participants.
Effective January 1, 2020, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology Joe Brzezinski, Ph.D. and Director of Marketing and External Relations Jill Cowperthwaite will take over as co-directors of the program. Joe is a longtime GSIP and CSD mentor (see his bio on page 55), and Jill has been involved in marketing and fundraising for the program since its beginning. They are most grateful for the inspired leadership and generous support that have contributed to the program’s strong foundation and look forward to cultivating it in the years to come.
While I expected the Gates Center Summer Internship Program to change the way I look at research, I did not anticipate how it would impact my self-perception. From the moment I started in the lab, I felt like a scientist. My ideas were valued, my contributions were validated, and my presence, especially as a woman in science, was affirmed. The program helped me find the confidence I needed to continue pursuing a career in research.
~Ellie Macintosh, Davidson College, GSIP Class of 2018, winner of a 2019 Goldwater Scholarship – an award founded by the U.S. Congress in 1986 to encourage scientific research.
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