Ninety-nine alum and Johns-Hopkins doctor says Notre Dame Prep and running track helped set him up for career in medicine.
In a relatively young career in medicine, Kyle Jackson ’99 (NDP) has already had his share of success. He’s authored a number of important and well-received journal articles in the field of cancer stem cells and adult stem-cell biology and he’s currently doing some pretty important work with pediatric cancer patients at Johns-Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. But this success may not have occurred had it not been for some tough, hard work as a member of the Fighting Irish track and field team.
In those early days of NDP, the school didn’t have many hurdles available, which was tough for someone like Jackson, who specialized in the low and high hurdles.
“We had one, single hurdle. To practice I would jump over that one hurdle, jog back in a circle and then jump over that same hurdle, again and again,” he said. “After practice, I would ask the coaches to trust me with the hurdle to take it home on weekends to practice some more. When the end of my senior season came, I medaled at the regional finals and it was one of my proudest moments in high school because I knew how many scraped knees, pulled muscles and how much hard work had gone into that one moment.”
Looking back to that point in his life, Jackson thinks it’s exactly that sort of hard work that prepared him for when things got harder during his residency and then harder still during fellowship. He says it takes a great deal of commitment and perseverance to make it through his 30-hour hospital shift or an 80-hour work week (with dozens of additional hours at home) and finish the work that needs to be done to make sure his patients receive the care they deserve.
“Along those lines, and it isn’t anything I can take credit for, but having the support of those close to me was equally important. I’ve been blessed with an immensely understanding and supportive wife—Lisa, who has at times carried me and has always been there for me. Concurrent and prior to her support, my family and friends have always been there when things have been tough and I couldn’t have made it to this point without that help.”
Always knew he’d be a doctor
Jackson says we’ve probably heard this a million times from other alums, but he really knew in high school what he would be doing for a living. “While I was at Notre Dame I thought it would be great to become an orthopedic surgeon,” he says. “Soon after graduating, though, my family experienced a tragic loss when my aunt passed away from cancer. I also had an uncle who died from leukemia, but that was before I was born. Those events gave me a clarity and purpose that I’ve never lost: I wanted to work to change and improve the way cancer is treated so that others wouldn’t have to go through what my family went through.”
Jackson also preferred the pediatric side of cancer care. “With their enthusiasm, honesty and overall innocence, I couldn’t imagine not helping children who had such devastating illnesses,” he says. “In my job, I get to work with kids, building relationships with them and their families, and on other days I get to go into the lab on the seemingly never-ending quest to find the underlying mechanisms involved in cancer, especially Ewing’s sarcoma a bone and soft tissue cancer that affects children disproportionately.”
Special moment
Realizing that he’s been blessed with a successful start to his career as a doctor, Jackson says a few highlights already stand out. He says one of his favorite moments was near the conclusion of his master’s in public health program when he was presenting his research in front of students and faculty as well as the hospital’s molecular epidemiology department.
“I was discussing a method of cultivating human, adult mammary stem cells in culture and their estrogen receptor expression as a potential model for the development of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. Sounds complicated and it really is. But I invited my parents to the talk, which was the first time they were able to see me present in that professional context. I believe they really enjoyed it. What I hadn’t told them was that at the end of my presentation, after I had given credit to my lab mentors and collaborators, I included a slide thanking my parents for all their hard work and effort to put me in a position to make such a presentation. That was a special moment for me and them.”
More recently, Jackson says there have been a lot of small-scale highlights in building relationships with his patients and sharing in their medical successes. “It’s quite an arc to travel with a patient from an initial cancer diagnosis that will often start with something along the lines of ‘Yes, this is cancer, but we can cure it, and here’s how we’re going to do it,’ followed by often grueling therapy, and finally leading up to telling the patient and his or her family, ‘I have great news. Your cancer is gone!’ That’s a huge highlight for me every time I get to relay that news!”
NDP a special school
We asked Jackson what he remembers fondly about Notre Dame and he said even though it’s probably a cliché to say winning Irish Week during his senior year was a very special event for him at NDP, it really was one of his greatest memories.
He also has special spots in his memory bank for a couple of NDP teachers: Gregory Simon and Tony Borton. “Back in those days, Mr. Simon was a just-out-of-college, enthusiastic world cultures teacher and basketball coach,” Jackson recalls. “And Mr. Borton had this amazing skill of keeping the classroom engaged and involved, while at the same time imparting an understanding of the underlying principles of mathematics. In retrospect, his classroom was very much like a close-knit college class.”
Jackson says he also fondly remembers the soccer practices before school started and being able to meet as an entire school in the triangle as Fr. Leon stood on a bench to address the students. “But the one thing I probably miss the most is the sort of camaraderie that existed everywhere at NDP,” he says. “It’s something really special.”
Jackson also made it a point to say how important it is to keep in mind how much actually goes into a school like NDP.
“As a student, I hadn’t really appreciated it. But looking back, there were always people around, helping, volunteering and contributing money to the school. Now, as our alumni base continues to grow, I think many of us are in a place where we can do the same.”
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.