UNM Seeks High School Girls Who Want to Become Orthopedic Specialists

On Sat­ur­day, March 2, UNM will con­duct a spe­cial work­shop for high school junior and senior girls who might be inter­ested in pur­su­ing advanced degrees in ortho­pe­dic surgery and engi­neer­ing.  The pro­gram is spon­sored by the Perry Ini­tia­tive hon­or­ing Dr. Jacque­line Perry, one of the first female ortho­pe­dic sur­geons in the U.S.

Event orga­nizer Christina Salas, a Ph.D. can­di­date with the Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate pro­gram at UNM says stud­ies have shown that males fre­quently decide they want to work in ortho­pe­dics when they are in high school, but females usu­ally wait to decide until they are par­tially through med­ical school. The event is designed to give girls a chance to under­stand what ortho­pe­dists and engi­neers do so they have an oppor­tu­nity to con­sider the spe­cialty when there is time to thor­oughly study it. Students will hear from women lead­ers in these fields and try it for them­selves by per­form­ing mock ortho­pe­dic surg­eries and bio­me­chan­ics experiments.

Any­one who wants to learn more can visit the Perry Ini­tia­tive. Inter­ested par­tic­i­pants can email Christina Salas cchrsalas@salud.unm.edu or Kim Fields, kfields@salus.unm.edu.