Historically Black Colleges Combine Research, Education

Sidebar: Information on Minority Access to Research Careers In the United States, there are more than 100 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In the late 1860s, these institutions were designated by the federal government to educate African Americans as a result of a segregated educational system in the South. Science administrators at the majority of these schools view their mission differently from their counterparts at majority U.S. institutions. Rather than focus their efforts and resources on cutting-edge research, they concentrate on undergraduate education. These administrators, along with many observers, contend that this is an appropriate allocation of their resources, particularly in these days of scarce federal research funding. TEACHING-ORIENTED: NSF’s Luther Williams notes that HBCUs have a strong tradition of stressing undergraduate education. "HBCUs traditionally have been built around a mission of undergraduate education," explains Luther Williams, assistant director of the directorate for education and human resources at the National Science Foundation. But this does not mean that good, solid research cannot be conducted at these schools, notes Williams, who was president of one such institution, Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), from 1983 to 1987. "Teaching and research should not be seen as conflicting entities." INVALUABLE: Morehouse College’s John Hopps points out the educational utility of undergraduate research. Students at Atlanta-based Morehouse College, for example, participate in several innovative programs designed to involve undergraduates in scientific research. Yet research output is less important than is research for its educational value, says John H. Hopps, Morehouse's provost. It is considered "a critical teaching tool for undergraduates," he notes. Students who engage in scientific investigation side-by-side with faculty gain valuable experience, he observes. An important goal of science programs at historically black institutions is to provide African American undergraduates opportunities to do quality research that will enable them to continue their education at major research institutions and become part of the next generation of scientists. Cell biologist J.K. Haynes, chairman and professor of biology at Morehouse, explains that his college is "oriented to preparing students to go on to graduate school. "It's not that administrators don't recognize the importance of scholarly research," he adds. "But it's just not as important to the college's mission as is teaching." DUAL DEMANDS: Meharry’s Shirley Russell points to the difficulty of wearing many academic hats and conducting research as well. With their primary mission centered on teaching, historically black institutions often find themselves struggling to obtain federal research funding dollars. The emphasis on teaching puts additional pressure on faculty who are scraping for research grants, acknowledges Shirley B. Russell, professor and chairwoman of microbiology at Meharry Medical College, an HBCU in Nashville, Tenn., and assistant dean for research in Meharry's School of Dentistry. The teaching load at an HBCU frequently makes it difficult to be a researcher, she maintains, adding, "if I'm not productive enough, the grants don't get renewed." Morehouse's Haynes contends that the situation can "be a catch-22": Without sufficient time to do research to obtain preliminary data, scientists cannot hope to compete for highly sought-after R01 investigator-initiated awards from the National Institutes of Health. The situation is even worse for young researchers. George Hill, a professor of biomedical sciences at Meharry, notes that some researchers at mainstream institutions and members of Congress question the usefulness of spending federal research money on HBCUs as opposed to better-equipped, research-intensive universities. He maintains that there are three reasons why research at these schools shouldn't be overlooked. First, much of the research focuses on diseases, such as hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and prostate cancer, that disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities. Second, he argues that many African American undergraduate and graduate students still want to get their degrees in an "environment in which they can relate to a professor or scientist on the faculty. Often students feel they have a better chance of getting a good education and training at such institutions." The third reason for supporting HBCUs, Hill says, is the need to fill the pipeline. By providing opportunities for research and training, "you create a situation for students and young faculty to be mentored. This increases the number of minority scientists for the future." EARLY START: Florida's A&M Franklin Hammilton feels that science students should get involved in research early in their sophmore year. Many HBCUs are bullish on their future in research. "We encourage students to go into internship programs, to get involved in research in their sophomore year," says Franklin Hamilton, vice president for research at Florida A&M University. "We're establishing a greater number of graduate programs, enrollment has increased, and the research base has increased threefold in the last seven years," Hamilton adds. Today, Howard University is the only HBCU that can be classified as a comprehensive research institution, based on the numbers of doctoral programs it offers. However, several of these schools, such as Meharry, have developed institution-wide research programs in science and medicine. Others, such as Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala., and Alabama A&M in Normal, are known for agricultural research. Federal Aid Various federal grants and training programs are helping historically black institutions train future scientists. The NSF-sponsored Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) provides up to $1 million a year for up to five years-with the possibility to renew for another five-to institutions to support research and help establish a research infrastructure. The program, which awards approximately $8 million annually, aims to increase the number of master's and doctoral degrees awarded to minority scientists and engineers. CREST supports Clark Atlanta University's Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems, for example, and has aided Howard University in establishing a Materials Science Research Center. Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology William A. Sibley and Bobby Wilson, Program Directors Room 815 National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, Va. 22230 (703) 306-1633 - Fax: (703) 306-0423 E-mail: wsibley@nsf.gov; bwilson@nsf.gov The Leadership Alliance James H. Wyche, Executive Director Associate Provost, Brown University Box 1963, Room 15, Sayles Hall Providence, R.I. 02912 (401) 863-1474 - Fax: (401) 863-2244 E-mail: james_wyche@brown.edu Minority Access to Research Careers Program (MARC) Adolphus Toliver, Chief, MARC Branch National Institute of General Medical Sciences 45 Center Dr., MSC 6200, Room 2AS.43 Bethseda, Md. 20892-6200 (301) 594-3900 - Fax: (301) 480-2753 E-mail: tolivera@gm1.nigms.nih.gov http://www.nih.gov/nigms/ Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) Ernest D. Marquez, Chief, MBRS Branch National Institute of General Medical Sciences 45 Center Dr., MSC 6200, Room 2AS.37 Bethesda, Md. 20892-6200 (301) 594-3900 - Fax: (301) 480-2753 E-mail:marqueze@gm1.nigms.nih.gov http://www.nih.gov/nigms/ Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Sidney McNairy, Jr., Director National Center for Research Resources One Rockledge Center 6705 Rockledge Dr. Bethesda, Md. 20892-7965 (301) 435-0788 - Fax: (301) 480-3770 E-mail: sidneym@ep.ncrr.nih.gov http://www.ncrr.nih.gov LEAD BY EXAMPLE: Minority students need more scientist role models as well as opportunities to network, contends Brown’s James Wyche. Some government-sponsored programs, such as the Leadership Alliance, link majority institutions with HBCUs. The alliance is an academic consortium of 23 institutions-including all eight Ivy League schools and 10 HBCUs-aimed at providing educational and research opportunities for both HBCU students and faculty. James Wyche, associate provost of Brown University and executive director of the alliance, contends that for students to succeed as scientists, they must have role models and opportunities for both research experience and networking. Noting that the first group of undergraduates to participate in 1992 have only now entered graduate school, Wyche says that it's too soon to gauge the program's success. Yet, Theodore Bremner, an associate professor of biology at Howard, has already taken advantage of the Leadership Alliance program. Taking a year's leave of absence at Brown, he is studying macrophage differentiation in leukemia cells at Howard. He explains that defects in the formation of macrophages affect immunity, which in turn plays a role in cancer development. At Brown, he studies apoptosis, or programmed cell death, an important part of how cancer kills cells (T.A. Bremner et al., Life Sciences, 58:1015-22, 1996). The National Institutes of Health also fosters opportunities for minority scientists through several programs. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences sponsors two: the Minority Access to Research Centers (MARC) and Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS). MARC provides grants to institutions to train undergraduates to enter graduate biomedical programs. MBRS gives research grants to faculty members at institutions to help support undergraduate student research. According to Clifton Poodry, director of the division of Minority Opportunities in Research, some 40 HBCUs participate in MARC, which has an annual budget of about $18 million. Currently, 47 schools are in the MBRS program, with support totaling about $50 million. NIH's National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) also has a program designed to increase minority involvement in the biomedical sciences. The Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program provides grants on a competitive basis to institutions, many of which are HBCUs. The awards, which average from $500,000 to $3 million for five years, support minority scientists, providing salaries, laboratory space, postdoctoral and technical support, and travel support to scientific meetings. Sidney McNairy, Jr., NCRR's director of research infrastructure, says the RCMI program funds 17 institutions with its $29 million annual budget. McNairy, who oversees the RCMI program, sees it as "fortifying institutions' abilities to meet the critical need of training more minority doctoral scientists." Clark Atlanta University, for example, has begun its own RCMI initiative in cellular, molecular and developmental biology, and biochemistry with a projected long-term focus on gene structure and function. Ph.D.s WANTED: NCRR’s Sidney McNairy, Jr., sees a crucial need for training more minority doctoral scientists. Despite their emphasis on teaching and their constant struggle for research dollars, HBCUs are poised to excel in certain research areas, observers say. Kenneth Olden, former director of the Howard University Cancer Center and now director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, contends that HBCUs could fill an important niche in translational research-that is, research that bridges discoveries from the laboratory to the community. In fact, HBCUs such as Howard, Meharry, and Morehouse School of Medicine already focus much of their clinical research on diseases that affect primarily African Americans and other minorities. COMMUNITY-ORIENTED: Lucile Adams-Campbell heads Howard University Cancer Center’s participation in NIH’s Women’s Health Initiative. At Howard, for example, epidemiologist Lucile Adams-Campbell heads one of 10 HBCU-based programs that participate in the Women's Health Initiative, NIH's 12-year study of how diet and lifestyle affect the development of cancer and heart disease in 60,000 American women. Adams-Campbell's team hopes to look at 3,000 African American women in the area around Howard to better understand the role of diet, hormone therapy, and vitamin D in disease development. Adams-Campbell directs the Howard Cancer Center, the only stand-alone HBCU cancer center. She points out that the center's primary mission is to both serve the African American community and conduct research on factors that impact its health. At Florida A&M, 102 African American students are wearing tiny ambulatory blood-pressure monitors and keeping tabs of their daily activities to help teach psychologists about stress and anger. The devices are part of a five-year study supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. In another project, Florida A&M educators, led by Virdon Evans, chairman of the department of secondary education, recently completed a three-year study designed to teach educators appropriate ways of intervention to give substance-exposed children the chance to develop normally. The researchers worked with 237 children in four Florida counties over three years. The project serves as a clearinghouse to gather and disseminate current research on high-risk children. Meharry's Russell points out that an advantage to working at an HBCU is that she and her team have been able to exploit a relatively "unexplored niche" in an African American disease. She and her coworkers study the formation of keloids, abnormal skin growths associated with a wound healing process gone awry. Roughly 1 in 30 African Americans is affected. She is conducting this research along with colleagues at Harvard University; the University of California, San Francisco; and Tulane University. Russell, who notes that keloids are both common and underinvestigated, studies a cell culture model of keloid formation, which is regulated by hormones and growth factors. She and her colleagues have discovered an abnormality in the formation process, and are investigating the role of transcription factors (S.B. Russell et al., Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 104:241-5, 1995). They are searching for the gene involved that predisposes African Americans to keloid development, as well as investigating other fibroproliferative diseases such as uterine fibroma. BACK TO BASICS: Meharry’s Sukhbir Mokha examines how the brain and nervous system control pain. Many other HBCU scientists focus their attention on basic research. At Meharry, Sukhbir Mokha, an associate professor of physiology, plumbs the depths of the brain's pain receptors to understand the neurobiology of both acute and chronic pain mechanisms (X.-M. Wang et al., Journal of Neurophysiology, 76:3568-72, 1996). He studies a brain peptide, nociceptin, which is known to have pain-enhancing effects. Yet when applied to the trigeminal nerve cells, it inhibited pain responses. He and his colleagues found that nociceptin also reduced the response to stimulation of the NMDA-receptor, which has a role in mediating pain signals and in chronic pain from nerve injuries or inflammation. The researchers hope to solve this apparent paradox and understand how the peptide modulates pain. Meharry's Hill studies African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness. He is trying to identify biological targets within trypanosome at which to aim drugs. The disease is a major killer of cattle and humans in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current therapeutic drugs are frequently toxic, he notes. Hill and his coworkers have identified an enzyme system, called trypanosome alternative oxidase, that is responsible for cellular respiration-it allows cells to take up oxygen. He subsequently has cloned the gene for the enzyme and showed that the gene functions in bacteria similarly to the way it works in trypanosome (M. Chaudhuri, G. Hill, Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology, 83:125-9, 1996). The next step is to crystallize the enzyme and create a molecular model from which to conduct further studies. Hill also directs the Center for Research Excellence in Cell and Molecular Biology, an NSF-sponsored CREST at Meharry. The center focuses on investigating membrane biology and cell signaling. The grant supports research and infrastructure development, including graduate students and equipment, and helps sponsor outreach programs. Outreach programs include summer opportunities to work with scientists in their labs as well as special symposia for students. While promising projects abound, HBCU researchers recognize the obstacles ahead in competing for funding with the larger research-centered institutions and the difficulty in recruiting a new generation of scientists to fill fac-ulty positions. For those reasons, they insist, HBCUs must continue to focus their education efforts in filling the pipeline to scientific careers.

Historically Black Colleges Combine Research, Education

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