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PRESIDENTIAL AWARDS RECOGNIZE MENTORS Administration honors educators who draw underrepresented groups into science Sophie L. Wilkinson C&EN Washington
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entering has its own rewards, measured in large part in the success of one's proteges. But it doesn't hurt to get a pat on the back from the White House. Earlier this month, National Science Foundation Deputy Director Joseph Bordogna presented 10 individuals and 10 institutions with the 2000 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring. The award honors those who encourage a significant number of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities to pursue careers in these fields. Five individual awardees have ties to chemistry: Daniel L. Akins, professor of chemistry and director of the Center for Analysis of Structures & Interfaces at City College of New York; Vallie W. Guthrie, chemistry professor and director of the Greensboro Area Mathematics & Science Education Center at North Carolina A&T
State University, Greensboro; Glenn D. Kuehn, professor of biochemistry at New Mexico State University; Juan Lopez-Garriga, professor of chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez; and Michael F. Summers, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Hie winners, who were feted at a White House reception and attended a symposium on mentoring, each received $10,000 grants to fund further mentoring activities. Mentoring often takes professors beyond the classroom and lab and into the world of their students. 'We're intimately involved with many facets of students' lives," Akins tells C&EN. "Virtually every student that we've had has had a personal problem that might have interfered with or interrupted their graduate studies. We have intervened to help get them through." Typical difficulties include parents who may not realize that students need a quiet place at home to work or who want the students to get permanent
Effective mentoring has five key elements Glenn D. Kuehn, professor of biochemistry at New Mexico State University, has mentored almost 50 minority students in the past 26 years. He believes there are five key elements involved in attracting students into science, math, and engineering, particularly from underrepresented groups. • Don't drain the pipeline; fill it. Don't content yourself with skimming off the cream of the student crop. Instead, develop fresh talent Kuehn and his university colleagues make 50 or 60 trips a year to present research seminars and demonstrations at southwestern tribal community colleges, which enroll about 3,000 American Indian students. Some of the students end up conducting research at New Mexico State in the summer. And once they finish their associate degrees, some of the graduates transfer to the university to earn a bachelor's degree in science. 54
SEPTEMBER 25, 2000 C&EN
• Offer research opportunities. Students become highly motivated once they find they are capable of doing research. • Establish a strong ethnic support system. "You have to let students see something mat says, Tou belong here.' If you have minority faculty in your department, that makes a statement If these students participate in supplemental instruction activities, make sure they're not the only minority sitting there." • Provide complete financial aid assistance. Tell the students where they can obtain funding so they know "that they can get through to the end of the degree that they're working for. We lose more science students for lack of financial support than for any other reason." • Compile success stories. "Be able to tell the students that what they are participating in has a high probability of moving them on in their career. That motivates them like crazy."
jobs so they can help take care of their families, Akins says. Akins prods students from underrepresented groups to earn doctorates so they can "assume a leadership role in science." If you don't have this involvement, he says, "then you are subject to other groups' defining the agenda." While Akins focuses his efforts on promoting graduate work, Summers concentrates on undergraduates. More than half the students he mentors are from underrepresented minority groups. This past summer, Summers had 27 undergraduates carrying out research in his lab. How does he manage to keep it all together? The students are overseen by five graduate students and three postdocs. He notes that lab work centers around molecular biology and structural biology, "so even freshmen can come in and make some mistakes without it being a serious health concern. Fm not working in an organic chemistry lab where things could easily be blown up." Nine of Summers' students who were seniors last year were authors on 14 papers altogether, including one in Science and one in Nature Structural Biology. 'Two African Americans were co-first authors on the Nature Structural Biology paper," Summers says. 'They basically carried the project from start to finish." Lopez-Garriga has mentored many university students in his own lab and also spends considerable time working on behalf of K-12 students through the Science on Wheels outreach program, which he directs. Two vans transport materials for chemistry, physics, and biology demonstrations and other activities to more than 250 schools throughout Puerto Rico. The program also puts on teacher workshops. Guthrie has worked with thousands of K-12 teachers to spark an interest in science among younger students. And even in this sophisticated era, it isn't necessary to use high-tech materials to gain the children's attention. For instance, children can squeeze a couple of ice cubes between their hands for 20 seconds. When they release the ice, they'll find that the cubes have stuck together. Guthrie says this teaches the students about melting and about making scientific observations (the ice is cold and hard). In addition, the students may sing a song about snow and sleet, or read a book about a little boy who tries to save a snowball overnight in his coat pocket— with predictable results. Guthrie says this blend of experiences shows the kids "that
science is not a separate subject, that it cuts across every one of the subjects that they take." As with the individual awardees, the institution al programs recognized with a presidential men toring award represent a Clockwise from top left: Akins, Guthrie, Summers, Lopez-Garriga, and Kuehn
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broad range of activities. Those with a po tential impact on chemistry are the Sum mer Research Opportunities Program of the Committee on Institutional Coopera tion, Champaign, ΠΙ.; the Indian Natural Resource, Science & Engineering Pro gram based at Humboldt State Universi ty, Areata, Calif.; the Office of Minority & Special Programs at the University of Ala bama, Birmingham; the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement Pro grams at the University of Washington and in the University of California sys tem; the Women in Science & Engineer ing Program at the University of Michi gan; the Minority Engineering, Math ematics & Science Program at the University of New Mexico; and the Com pact for Faculty Diversity at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Educa tion, Boulder, Colo. As President Clinton said in a state ment about the awards, 'We must draw upon our nation's full talent pool to main tain U.S. leadership across the frontiers of scientific knowledge." The programs and people that he honored are seeing to it that this goal is reached.^
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