OpenWorks @ MD Anderson
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The Helping Hands of Facilities Management, 2025, detail
No full textArtist(s): Daniel Banda
Materials: Wood, metal
Vintage metal workbench with wood top decorated with the helping hands of the men and women of the Facilities Management Division.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1022/thumbnail.jp
Corky, 2025, detail
No full textArtist(s): Stephanie Colman
Materials: Wine corkshttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1116/thumbnail.jp
Mechanical Bloom, 2025, alt-view
No full textArtist(s): Verenice Mares
Materials: AC filter for flowers, branch from trimmed tree in yard, hot glue, spare engine parts, valve lifters, bolts, rocker arms, spring, bearing and bearing race & spot weldinghttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1101/thumbnail.jp
Mechanical Bloom, 2025
No full textArtist(s): Verenice Mares
Materials: AC filter for flowers, branch from trimmed tree in yard, hot glue, spare engine parts, valve lifters, bolts, rocker arms, spring, bearing and bearing race & spot weldinghttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1100/thumbnail.jp
Radiating Peacock, 2025, close-up
No full textArtist(s): Amelia Fitzpatrick
Materials: Thermoplastic radiation immobilization mask, construction paper, plastic spoons, glass marbles, food picks, acrylic paint, tapehttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1094/thumbnail.jp
Growing Resilience, 2025
No full textArtist(s): Philip Roberts
Materials: Copper, plant, soil
At first glance, this may appear to be a simple pot made of pennies — but it is, in truth, a sculpture with much deeper meaning. The approximately 1,500 corroded coins that form its walls were gathered from the fountains of MD Anderson. Over time, water and metal reacted, leaving them too damaged to be accepted by banks or coin machines (we tried). Rejected by systems of commerce, these coins have found a second purpose here.
Each penny once left someone’s hand with a wish — a wish for healing, for strength, for time. Some of those wishes ended in remission and reunion. Others in unimaginable loss. The weight of the sculpture reflects this sacred tension: the unimaginable joy of recovery, tethered to the quiet heaviness of grief.
Just as we all navigate light and darkness, sorrow and sweetness, transformation allows us to carry both — not by ignoring the contrast, but by growing within it. In the presence of both heartbreak and hope, something beautiful can still take root. There can be purpose in the heavy, and there can be beauty in the joy — not in spite of the struggle, but because life has grown through it.
The plant growing within — an Aglaonema ‘Siam Aurora Lipstick’ — is itself a survivor. It once grew in The Park, a special place that brought comfort and beauty to many before it was closed. Now, it thrives again, surrounded by the patina of wishes, reminding us that even in endings, there are new beginnings.
Every part of this piece is made from leftover materials (soil, a plastic pot, glue, pennies, and a plant). Nothing was purchased. It is a work of transformation — discarded elements becoming something purposeful, beautiful, and whole. Like the people this institution serves, it is a living testimony that resilience is not born from ease, but from endurance — from choosing to grow, again and again, in even the most unlikely places.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1052/thumbnail.jp
The Heart of Nursing, 2025, close-up
No full textArtist(s): Lydia Coleman
Materials: Cardboard, plastics, nursing supplies
Gathered nursing supplies that were left by discharged patients, patient passed away and family did not want O2 carrier, and cardboard boxes on the unit from water cases during ice storm ride-out teams.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1051/thumbnail.jp
Dilbert the Armadillo, 2025, detail
No full textArtist(s): Kayla Reyes
Materials: Cardboard, newspaper, glue
Sculpture and paper mache techniques using cardboard, newspaper and glue.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1045/thumbnail.jp
Spring Stride RTN, 2025
No full textArtist(s): Miriam Bustamante
Materials: Paper, plastic, glue
Paper bags collected from volunteer supplies bags and material management paper bags and shopping bags. Plastic bottle caps from water bottles we recycle and glue. Also the IV caps for the medication we recycle and nurses set aside when they open medication vials.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/recycledart2025/1040/thumbnail.jp
Professional Alliance for Learning and Support (PALS): A Pilot Career Development Educational Program for Administrative Support Personnel in Healthcare Research
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly transformed the healthcare research landscape, staging unprecedented challenges for administrative research-support personnel. While career programs and retention benefits have emerged to support frontline healthcare workers facing health concerns, burnout and employee-turnover, many “classified”/administrative support staff in research departments who experience similar challenges remain without adequate structured support. This lack of structure has impacted job satisfaction, career-progression and talent retention within this crucial sector.
Recognizing the critical importance of addressing this training gap for the benefit of the broader research enterprise, the Interdisciplinary Translational Education and Research Training (ITERT) Core at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center established a dedicated program called Professional Alliance for Learning and Support (PALS) in 2023-24. The objectives of this program were to (1) create a career development guide tailored for non-academic research-support staff, bringing awareness to relevant institutional and global resources for professional growth; (2) provide a means for increased staff engagement within the research environment and enable career planning for retention of talent; (3) promote teamwork across the research enterprise and facilitate opportunities for safe-space feedback on work experiences; and (4) enable structured mentoring constellations to enhance professional growth.
We conducted a pilot with eight members of the research-support team who voluntarily signed up for this program. These members support research faculty and laboratory staff within the department of Translational Molecular Pathology in diverse administrative capacities. Through interactive workshops, instructional lectures, online courses, and relevant networking opportunities, PALS delivered personalized training, leadership development, functional mentoring and career-navigation tools. Over six months, we explored the critical role of PALS in improving performance, engagement, and facilitating communication between staff and leadership, ensuring that staff concerns were heard and considered in departmental decision-making processes, and in aiding staff to visualize and plan for career advancement.
Our findings demonstrate that the PALS program enhanced staff awareness of next steps in relevant career-progression pathways, enabled mentoring relationships and greatly improved the morale (career-confidence) of the participants. We also observed marked longer-term benefits: the program provided direct support and visibility to administrative staff within research environments, consequently enhancing job satisfaction, retention of talent and career advancement, with 100% of participants drafting individual development plans and actively taking on either leadership roles within the department or career promotion within a year. Our study suggests that research departments implementing educational programs like PALS can navigate change more effectively while fostering an inclusive and career-enhancing workplace environment