Oncofertility Summer Research Experience 2009

With support from the federal stimulus package Northwestern received from the National Cancer Institute, two teachers and two undergraduates gained hands-on experience in a working lab devoted to providing new fertility options for cancer patients!

The money allowed Northwestern to bring relevant lab activities to teachers around the country and bring girls through the pipeline toward careers in science.

This video gives you an idea of what the experience was like. Check out the job summary to see if you or someone you know would be interested in doing it next summer:

http://www.osep.northwestern.edu/osep/summerfellowship/
http://www.research.northwestern.edu/

Recently, WBEZ Chicago’s Eight Forty-Eight came to the Oncofertility Consortium to interview Dr. Woodruff about fertility preservation for cancer patients.  While the interview mainly discussed new techniques that will provide hope for cancer patients facing potential infertility, the interview also discussed the Illinois Women’s Health Registry and the Oncofertility Saturday Academy.

From the WBEZ website:

Last year, Dr. Teresa Woodruff won a $21 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create the Oncofertility Consortium. There she hopes to develop new fertility treatments for people who have undergone treatment for cancer. While many people can survive a cancer diagnosis, the treatments can destroy fertility. Dr. Woodruff runs The Woodruff Lab at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and also runs the Oncofertility Saturday Academy. It brings young women from a small high school on Chicago’s South Side into the lab to learn basic biology and clinical medicine.

The audio of the interview is included!

Eight Forty-Eight Interview

The OSA counterpart in San Diego, the Be WiSE (Better Education for Women in Science and Engineering) Young Women in Cancer Research Oncofertility Academy, was highlighted in the Del Mar Times. Twelve young women representing 10 high schools were at the event on July 25 to learn about Oncofertility and to hear from an ovarian cancer survivor.

Read more about it in the article by Gina McGalliard here.

Last night was the world premiere of OSA: Sisters In Science, a documentary detailing the Oncofertility Saturday Academy. This documentary told the story of what happens when young women from a small South side Chicago high school gets introduced to an emerging science like Oncofertility.  The film documented the hands-on experiences, classes, and testimonies of the young women of Young Women’s Leadership Charter School as they spent their Saturdays interacting with the Woodruff lab and other resources from Northwestern in 2009. 

A very personal story was told about how these high school students, intrepidly took on challenging experiments dissecting mice, ovaries in the uterus, isolating follicles, embedding them in alginate, measuring hormones, fertilizing real mouse eggs, and spending exclusive time on the Da Vinci Surgical Robot. 

Most importantly, the documentary chronicled the evolution of the OSA students, from passionate young women in high school waiting to be sparked by inspiration, to JOSAS (Junior OSA Sisters) to SOSAS (Senior OSA Sisters).  It also told the story of these young women’s families and the role this experience had in reaffirming a relationship of empowerment through education.  It was clear that every parent thought their child capable of any achievement, and OSA gave that potential a shape and form that many parents can’t imagine.

Directors of the program, Megan Faurot and Teresa Woodruff held a panel along with the film’s creators; producer Harlan Wallach, director Stefani Foster, and the film’s editor Erin Kitzinger.  The panel was a source of reflection and enthusiasm for the whole audience, including OSA alumni, POSA (Parents in OSA), as well as attendees of the Oncofertility Consortium’s on-going Annual Summit.

“This is a story of expanding horizons…you all have the potential to be the next generation of leaders, of teachers of scientists and creative thinkers. You have the opportunity to pass on to the next generation a world more vibrant, more creative and with more opportunity than the world you inherited.” –From Teresa Woodruff’s opening remarks.

The program is in its third year and is continuing strong.

The inaugural session of the Cardiology Summer Academy just ended. It gave seniors from the Young Women’s Leadership Academy Charter School a chance to experience the world of the heart through real-life experiences at Northwestern Memorial’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. The program’s success was noted in an article by the Chicago Tribune.

The week-long summer experience for the small group of high school students is one of the science academies run by the Women’s Health Science Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine. The Summer Academy is designed to educate female high school students who are considering pursuing a career in science or medicine and to teach them about cardiology and cardiovascular health.

Megan Faurot is the director of education programs for the Institute for Women’s Health Research at Feinberg. She is also in charge of the Oncofertility Saturday Academy. “My goal is to create engaging and authentic learning experiences for high school girls to inspire and prepare them to successfully pursue careers in science and medicine,” she said.

The students participate in different activities such as watching cardiac surgery, performing dissections and getting CPR certified. Another major goal of the program is to increase the students’ knowledge of their own heart health so the curriculum also includes daily personal training sessions, lectures on heart disease and prevention and heart-healthy cooking demonstrations and meals.

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July 23rd at 7:00 pm at the McCormick Tribune Center Forum, Northwestern University, Evanston Campus is the world premiere of the Oncofertility Saturday Academy documentary film.

The film describes the story of 15 juniors and 14 seniors from Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago, who were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants, to participate in a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about the emerging, new field of Oncofertility.

This program provides the students with the opportunity to work alongside scientists and clinicians who are making new discoveries and providing healthcare everyday for the Oncofertility patient. Through these direct interactions with professionals, the students are exposed to the wide variety of academic and career paths that they can consider pursuing.

Lastly, the program provides the space for the students to develop bonds with each other, the professionals, and their medical school mentors. The students’ connection to the Oncofertility Saturday Academy continues beyond the duration of the program. After the students graduate from high school, we remain in communication to provide the necessary support needed to keep them focused on their academic goals and to become the next generation of women science leaders.

Oncofertility Saturday Academy began is 2007 as the result of the science partnership between Northwestern University and Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago.

Two high school graduates from the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School will be able to do hands-on research on Oncofertility this summer, thanks to President Obama’s stimulus money, the Chicago Tribune reported today.

The stimulus money is coming from the National Cancer Institute and will enable Ashley McKinney and Megan Romero to take part in the paid internship here in Teresa Woodruff’s lab at Northwestern University.

Melissa Resh, a teacher at the school, will also be doing research at the lab with money from the same stimulus package.

To read the story from the Chicago Tribune, click here: Stimulus cash aids Northwestern mentoring program.

 For a glimpse into what the Oncofertility Saturday Academy is all about, watch this video of the juniors during their session on February 28th:

YouTube Direct LinkJOSA Video Tara S. Kerpelman

Dr. Jeffrey Chang wins the San Diego Science Alliance Partnership Award at a ceremony on May 21st, 2009. He is accompanied by SDSA Executive Director Nancy Taylor and SDSA Preseident Rick Beach. Photo courtesy of SDSA.

Dr. Jeffrey Chang, the principal investigator of the National Physicians Cooperative, is the winner of the Partnership Award from the San Diego Science Alliance. The award ceremony took place on May 21st in San Diego and honors Dr. Chang’s efforts to improve K-12 science education.

Dr. Chang is the Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at the University of California, San Diego. He was one of the leading physician scientists to identify Oncofertility as a critical issue for young women and he runs the San Diego equivalent of the Oncofertility Saturday Academy – the BE WiSE program.

Twelve young women from 10 different high schools and attending 10th to 12th grade in San Diego County are participating in the BE WiSE program. Their first session will be on reproductive biology and will take place on July 11th.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital is hosting a half-day conference on Saturday, May 17th called ”State-of-the-Art Hysterectomy: The Robotic Surgical Option.”

Dr. Patrick Lowe will be one of the speakers at this event. He was one of the doctors who participated in the Oncofertility Saturday Academy, teaching students from the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School about oncofertility and surgery. Those who attended Dr. Lowe’s module were given the opportunity to operate a Da Vinci robotic surgery machine – the same machine used to perform minimally-invasive hysterectomies.

Dr. Patrick Lowe from Northwestern Memorial Hospital stands by as a student from the Oncofertility Saturday Academy tries her hands at the Da Vinci robotic surgery machine, sometimes used to perform hysterectomies. Photo by Tara S. Kerpelman

The event at the hospital will include lectures, demonstrations and a talk by a patient who underwent robotic surgery.

The conference start at 8:30am and it costs $20.

For more information, go to Northwestern Memorial’s site: Robotic Hysterectomy Event.