Changing the Course of America Through Mentoring

Abstract

Over forty years ago, as a new director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Dr. Ruth Kirschstein formed a partnership with Dr. Geraldine Woods and Congressman Louis Stokes to create two ground breaking program, The Minority Biomedical Research Support Program (MBRS), and later, the Minority Access Research Careers (MARC). These stellar programs were the foundation programs to diversify science in America. Yet, forty years later, we are still taking about diversifying science. When I was informed that I was the 2012 Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Honoree, I wonder what she and Dr. Woods would say today about the status of diversity in Science in America. Why has these programs been both successful in raising the numbers, but unsuccessful in changing the landscape of science in our academic institutions. That will be focus of my presentation. The focus will also be on a least one option we should pursue.In 2002, I realized that I was mining a depleted field. I was taking the survivors of the K – 12 battleground and not enriching the number of underserved students we lose between K ‐ 12. Not changing the fact that we lose between 80 to 85% of our kids interested in science between the 3rd and 4th grade. The object of The Science Centered Inquiry‐Based Educational Activities iN Collaborating Elementary Classrooms (SCIENCE) Project, our early childhood educational component of the PIPELINE Program, is to develop a model to reverse this lost that can be replicated. To link this program with other components of the pipeline that makes science exploration relevant to the underserved. Not that all of these students will become physicians, other health care providers or scientists, but at least they will form the basis for a science education populous.