From building homemade structures to conducting biomedical research at the bench, Jason Edmonson’s journey shows how layered mentorship can shape a future scientist.
As a child, Jason Edmonson had a habit of building things.
“I used to take different items from around the house, like paper plates and empty paper towel rolls, and assemble them into structures,” he explains. “I was too young to think much about it, but my mom noticed.”
To channel that interest and energy, his mother enrolled him in The Franklin Institute’s Partnership for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science (PACTS), designed for middle school students interested in STEM curriculum. “My mom recognized it was important to get me involved in something related to science,” he says, laughing. “Of all the topics, I was interested in robotics.”
After aging out of the PACTS program following 8th grade, Edmonson’s passion for science deepened through another Franklin Institute initiative: STEM Scholars. The initiative is a selective 4-year program limited annually to 20 Philadelphia freshmen. Starting with exposure to a wide range of science-related disciplines, the program focuses on students’ specific interests and culminates in an 8-week summer internship at a local partner matched to the student.
Wistar’s Hubert J.P. Schoemaker Education & Training team, and specifically Dr. Jason Diaz, Education Program director, have been supporting STEM Scholars for the past few years by providing in-class, biomedical research lab lessons as part of the program’s summer research workshops. This year, Dr. Diaz taught gel electrophoresis, a process wherein the students must determine the genetic state of unknown DNA samples provided by Dr. Diaz.
“Students get to experience the excitement – and frustration! – of setting up an experiment, analyzing the results, and most importantly, learning how to navigate uncertainty,” he explained.
Alexis Sutch, manager of Youth Programs for The Franklin Institute, explained that when Edmonson began the program, he always was a willing participant and active contributor. “He is a student our team can depend on, especially when it comes to delegating tasks, participating in workshops, and much more,” she explained. “He always enters the room with a big smile, eager and ready to go — something our team looks forward to.”
When it came time for Edmonson to select his summer internship, the science seemed to click. “I took a survey to gauge my interests and find the right match and I ended up at Wistar.”
Edmonson’s internship began in Wistar’s 4-week High School Summer Program in Biomedical Research, where he was able to reinforce and broaden the learnings from the STEM Scholars program while also contributing to ongoing Wistar research. Following completion of that Program, he then continued his internship in Dr. Nan Zhang’s lab where he worked closely with mentors at different career stages and ages — specifically, predoctoral trainee Bryan Manning and undergraduate Linna Zhu.
Manning is a graduate student from St. Joseph’s University participating in the Cancer Biology Ph.D. Program, while Zhu is an undergraduate completing a year of work-study in the Zhang lab. Zhu recently completed Wistar’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, a National Science Foundation-funded, intensive 10-week laboratory experience that accepts a small cohort of top science students from across the U.S.
Edmonson may not have realized it, but he was taking part in something called “cascading mentoring,” where learning flows between “near peers” at different stages of their scientific journey. Wistar is a proponent of this structure, which benefits both mentee and mentor.
Mentoring is a critical component in teaching lab techniques, learning how to think like a scientist, and guiding younger scientists toward a future career in the lab.
“The value within a lab is usually based on the support and mentorship behind it,” explains Zhu. “With strong support, you’re able to explore different topics of interest, grow and develop in your role. And of the flip side, you learn a lot by teaching.”
For Manning, the opportunity to mentor is a hallmark of academia. “You’re trying to pull everyone along with you as you’re progressing,” he said. “It’s partly a way of paying back what I’ve been given from my mentors, and the experience is fruitful. It’s made me think harder about pursing a PI [primary investigator] path.”
Dr. Diaz also includes prior students as mentors during his teaching sessions at The Franklin Institute. “This past year, I was joined by Riley Holliday, a student at Lincoln University who completed an internship in Wistar’s Liang lab over the summer,” he explains. “My goal is to give students a taste of what it’s like in the driver’s seat as a researcher, introduce them to all the ways they can participate in research, and give them an opportunity to interact with a near-peer to help illustrate how to take that next step.”
During his internship, Edmonson gathered with Zhu and Manning, along with Dr. Brennah Britten, who worked in the Zhang lab before moving into an administrative role at Wistar, for a “journal club,” where they took time to review a paper on ovarian cancer, authored by Dr. Britten and the Zhang lab. The goal was to expose Edmonson to an academic paper, break down the science, and give him a deeper understanding of what the lab was pursuing.
“The goal of science in a classroom is to learn what’s known. However, science in a research lab is discovering what’s not known,” explains Dr. Britten. “In journal club, you read a research paper that often raises more questions than it answers … Journal clubs are great for breaking down complex papers into more bite-size pieces and getting practice in reading these kinds of reports.”
Edmonson admits it was a bit intimidating going from a structured program, where teachers guide the students every step of the way, to what he calls a “serious lab” where the process is a bit less linear. “The energy of the lab was very positive, though, and that made me feel comfortable. Through Wistar’s High School Summer Program, I built the foundation and knew a lot of the processes, but in the lab, it’s up to you to put it into practice.”
Edmonson, too, has been given the opportunity to demonstrate his own mentoring skills, both within the STEM Scholars program and beyond. “His progress as a mentor and leader has led him to becoming a Lead Ambassador for his senior year in the Program,” explained Alexis Sutch. “Each year, we pick two seniors to be Lead Ambassadors, which serves as the liaison between Youth Programs staff and Ambassadors. We choose this based on their performances in the Program. As a Lead Ambassador, Jason sets the prime example of what mentorship looks and acts like, and he is doing a fine job of it so far!”
Edmonson has already had some practice being a near peer mentor: when rising 10th and 11th grade students in Heights Philadelphia’s BEAM Program visited Wistar during his internship, he was asked to present an overview of his work from the summer program.
Outside of the lab, he also had a chance to “mentor” his mom on his day-to-day activities. “Every week my mom was asking me so many questions, so I’d have to give her a whole breakdown of what I was doing, even if she may not understand it,” he says. “She was just really excited to hear I was in a lab.”
Recently, Edmonson presented his final poster during the STEM Scholars internship poster showcase at The Franklin Institute, outlining the lab work from his time at Wistar. Dr. Diaz, Zhu, and Manning, along with Edmonson’s mom, all joined to support his hard work and congratulate him on the completion of his internship.
In the end, Edmonson feels like the experience has given him a foundation — and an interest — in continuing to pursue research. “This is definitely something that I want to do, which is kind of crazy since I’m rarely sure of anything,” he explains. “But I already have the skills to do it.”
“Wistar is one of our strongest partners, and we are so grateful for the support and connections we’ve made through the years,” says Sutch. “These relationships help our students navigate and explore different career pathways, build networks, and sometimes even find mentors, and I believe it is essential in the success of our program and our students.”