Four Directions Summer Research ProgramActivities
In addition to your faculty mentored research project, you will participate in a variety of activities designed to exposure you to careers in medicine, public health, and biomedical science; while also providing you with a tool set to pursue those careers. These activities include:
Weekly career development seminars
These seminars provide an opportunity for you to interact in a small group setting with senior faculty from Harvard Medical School. You will learn what it is like to run a large basic science research lab, or to work as a health care administrator (such as being a President of a hospital), or to be a medical educator focused on teaching medical students, or to be a full time clinician seeing patients in the hospital every day.
Skills workshops
We will provide you with all the information needed to apply to medical or graduate school. You will meet with leaders from the Office of Admissions at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, learning what is required to enter M.D. programs, PhD programs, and Masters in Public Health (MPH) programs. We also provide seminars to help with public speaking and scientific writing, all essential components of a successful future career.
Talking circles
The students meet with the program director every week to talk about the program, to share experiences and challenges, and to develop bonds as a group all reaching for a common goal.
Social networking events
These take place in the evenings and weekends, and involve a wide range of settings. This can range from outings to local beaches, to BBQs at the homes of our faculty, to dinners at local restaurants. These provide an opportunity for you to relax and continue to develop relationships with others in the Harvard community.
Alumni SPOTLIGHT
Charlotte Logan – FDSRP 2002
Charlotte grew up by Syracuse New York around the Onondaga and Oneida Nations. From a young age Charlotte was inspired by the sense of responsibility instilled in her by her elders. She has always wanted to honor this responsibility by using her work for the benefit of her community and its future generations.
After spending time in the Headlands Program at the University of Oklahoma, Charlotte chose FDSRP because it provided her with both the chance to gain research experience and shadow M.D.s. She was happy to find that FDSRP not only provided her with experience relevance to her studies, but also with great mentors and a community of peers with common goals and motivations. She formed lifelong friendships with other participants and says she enjoys watching them work to achieve their goals.
Since finishing FDSRP Charlotte graduated from OU and was accepted to the Bridge to PhD program at Columbia University. She is currently working on pre-MRNA 3’end processing and is interested in epigenetic and gene expression in mammalian systems. Her long term goals are to use her education to do research on Native diseases and eventually have young native students working in her lab.
Charlotte says she is most thankful for “being able to sit down and talk about science with respect to the Native community with other Native scientists and waking up every day to go do what I love to do. I am thankful for each idea, each word, each day.”