Where this chapter comes from
Howard has a chartered AANS student chapter. It is not a new club, and it was not handed to us. Two Howard medical students proposed it in 2019, and Dr. Damirez Fossett sponsored it and built most of what it offered: mentorship, shadowing, research, and a journal club. When Dr. Fossett moved to New Mexico, those programs moved with him. Our job this year is to build them back.
The founders
Howard does not have a neurosurgery residency. People still match into neurosurgery from here. The two students who started this chapter did exactly that, and they are the proof of what it exists to do.
Dr. Wilson came to Howard from New Orleans by way of Louisiana State University, where she studied biochemistry with honors research distinction. At Howard she founded this chapter and served as its first president, and she conducted research on neurodegenerative disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. She graduated from the College of Medicine in 2020 and is now a senior neurosurgery resident at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Dr. Rush, raised in Cleveland, studied biomedical engineering and Spanish at Ohio State before Howard, where she finished first in her class and was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha. Mentored by Dr. Fossett, she led this chapter as president and is first author, with Dr. Fossett, of the Journal of Neurosurgery history of neurosurgery at Howard, published in 2023. Now a neurosurgery resident at Brown, she is drawn to pediatric neurosurgery, to research on disparities in care, and to mentorship for students underrepresented in the field.
Dr. Fossett, a Baltimore native, studied biology at Yale and earned his MD at Johns Hopkins before completing his neurosurgery residency at George Washington University. He practiced in the Washington, DC area for three decades, including at Howard University Hospital, where he mentored the founders, sponsored this chapter, and built its mentorship, shadowing, research, and journal club programs. He co-edited a textbook of operative neurosurgical anatomy and was named the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Educator of the Year in 2023. He now practices at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery.
Founder backgrounds drawn from their residency program biographies at UT Southwestern and Brown Neurosurgery, from Rush DM, Fossett DT, Journal of Neurosurgery, 2023, and from Dr. Fossett's UNM Health Sciences Center profile.
The rebuilding phase, and the next chapter
We are in the rebuilding phase, and we say that without embarrassment. The charter never went away. The people did, the way people always do in a school where every class graduates. The founders proved that the distance between a Howard student and a neurosurgery residency is real but crossable, and that the crossing starts with research, mentorship, and someone who will vouch for you.
“If there is no struggle there is no progress.”
Frederick Douglass, West India Emancipation speech, 1857
That is what this year is for. The 2026 to 2027 board has rebuilt the calendar from the ground up:
- Two journal clubs, one led by students and one led by faculty
- Clinic and operating room shadowing with our faculty sponsor
- A research pipeline pointed at national meetings
- Guest lectures from practicing neurosurgeons
- Expanded community outreach across the DMV area
The next chapter for neurosurgery at Howard is being written by the people in the room this year, and there is space in it for you.