At Johns Hopkins University and medical schools across the country, high school and college students are participating in a tradition that has been brewing for 30 years: the Summer Jobs Programa joint venture between Hopkins and Youth works offering diverse young people paid internships in healthcare settings.
The program began in 1994, when Deborah Knight-Kerr became the first director of Community and Education Projects at the Johns Hopkins Health System. Wanting to build on the existing YouthWorks program, which connected Baltimore City teens with summer jobs, Knight-Kerr partnered with the government organization to create the Summer Jobs Program.
Its inaugural class included about 25 high school students. Since then, that number has grown exponentially; JHSJP youth program director Spencer Carroll estimates that between 8,000 and 9,000 students have participated over the past 30 years.
The program’s tremendous growth over 30 years was made possible by investment from the university and the health system. Johns Hopkins fully funds the paid positions, with no costs to participating departments. JHU President Ron Daniels It also supported a key investment in 2015 to subsidize 100 additional internship positions, helping the program reach 300 students per year. At the time, the only participating Johns Hopkins institutions were within Baltimore city limits, but that is no longer the case.
Inez Stewart, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine and one of the program’s executive sponsors, said, “Over the past few years, we have significantly expanded our reach to include Sibley Memorial Hospital, Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. This year, we are proud to add Suburban Hospital to our network. We are thrilled to impact even more young learners in the communities we serve, making our 30th year truly extraordinary.”
“They develop the skills of maturity. They become responsible. They learn to collaborate in intellectual spaces and have the opportunity to receive guidance from great people in their field.”
This year, 276 students from Maryland, Florida, and Washington, D.C., are participating in summer internships through the Johns Hopkins Summer Jobs Program, interning directly in Hopkins departments across the university and health system. Of those interns, 176 are Baltimore City residents with summer assignments at Johns Hopkins Hospital; Johns Hopkins Bayview; Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; CentroSOL; Johns Hopkins Government, Community, and Economic Partnerships; and Engineering Innovations, as well as other departments on the Homewood and Keswick campuses.
In the National Capital Region, 61 students are interning at Johns Hopkins Suburban Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital and Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center. And 25 students are working at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.
At all locations, summer interns, who range in age from 15 to 21, receive first-hand professional experience and mentoring opportunities. They also earn $15 an hour.
Students in the program work five hours a day for seven weeks, but the impact of the program extends beyond the workplace. Each week, interns are invited to attend a one-hour professional development event, where they hone their skills in resume writing, interviewing, and networking. This year’s professional development slate includes a seminar on emotional and mental health so that students are equipped with the tools to manage their well-being in new environments.
Any student between the ages of 15 and 21 can apply for positions in their home town or county, with no work experience or resume required. Maintaining a broader applicant pool allows the program to be more inclusive: “We want to expose as many young people as possible to these opportunities,” Carroll explains.
In those 30 years of growth, some things have stayed the same; for example, Yulanda Mitchell, educational coordinator for Surgical Pathology and Anatomic Pathology, has supervised and mentored student workers for eight years and counting.
“The program has helped me tremendously. It has helped me improve my interview skills, networking skills, and communication skills. It is also very valuable to come back each year to maintain and grow the connections I have made.”
“I’ve been working in the field of histology and pathology for over 25 years,” Mitchell says. “And one of the things I used to do was visit high schools to talk about my work. I wanted underrepresented young people to see what they could do and who they could be.”
This desire to help young people prompted Mitchell to become involved with JHSJP, where she now supervises a team of interns each summer. She assigns them to various labs, where their duties may include stocking the grossing room, billing for research, staining research slides, handling specimen logistics, archiving blocks and slides, managing inventory, scanning documents, performing equipment maintenance, or answering the phone. Included in her schedule are several learning days, where interns are introduced to a new aspect of pathology, including autopsy, cytology, surgical pathology, research, blood banking, microbiology, virology, phlebotomy, clinical chemistry, and hematology. The learning days are a collaborative effort of all the pathology education coordinators in blood banking (Lorraine Blagg), microbiology (Paula Mister), and the core lab (Melody Rorabeck). At the end of the summer, students prepare a presentation to demonstrate what they have learned.
While the scientific training students receive is important, Mitchell highlights how invaluable the program is to students’ personal development: “They develop the skills of maturity. They become responsible. They learn to collaborate in intellectual spaces and have the opportunity to be mentored by some great people in the field.”
Intern Trinity Bomar can attest to the program’s usefulness. Bomar, an undergraduate at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, has participated in JHSJP every summer since finishing her sophomore year in 2019.
“Since high school, I knew I wanted to do something in the medical field,” Bomar says of her decision to participate in the Summer Jobs Program. She wasn’t sure which facet of medicine best suited her until the summer of 2022.
“I worked in the pharmacy department at Johns Hopkins Hospital and helped with their pharmacy technician training program and the development of their website,” she says. “I was very excited; that was probably one of my best years there so far.”
Thanks to this experience, Bomar is on her way to becoming a pharmacist and plans to enroll in UM Eastern Shore’s pharmacy school once she completes her bachelor’s degree.
“The program has helped me tremendously,” she says. “It has helped me improve my interview, networking, and communication skills. It is also very valuable to come back each year to maintain and grow the connections I have made. I am very grateful for the opportunities and experiences I have gained over the years.”
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