Achievers Demonstrate That Success In Science Can Come Despite Barriers

The minority researchers say that hard work and perseverance enabled them to overcome obstacles in their paths. SELF-SUFFICIENCY: Ciro Sumaya says, "what we do for ourselves has the strongest impact. Getting to the rarefied upper levels of scientific achievement is difficult for most researchers, but for many members of underrepresented minority groups, the road to success is littered with obstacles. While overcoming poverty or an inferior primary education are major hurdles themselves, many minority researchers say that is just the tip of the iceberg. Numerous minority scientists who have achieved prominence cite the lack of mentors, the absence of professional networks, and the devaluation of work to support minorities in science as even bigger hindrances. These obstacles force many minority scientists to place extraordinary expectations upon themselves. Their skills, talents, drive, and refusal to let difficulties impede them have led these individuals to the top echelons of their fields. Most of the researchers interviewed here list several factors in their success: a supportive family, a mentor-sometimes a member of the same minority group-and a steely determination to be better than everyone else. Being the best, they say, guarantees that they cannot be overlooked when an opportunity arises. "I realize that although mentors and role models are important-even necessary-what we do for ourselves has the strongest, longest-lasting impact," says Ciro Sumaya, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Rockville, Md. A specialist in pediatric infectious diseases whose research has centered on Epstein-Barr virus infection in children, Sumaya is the highest ranking Hispanic at HHS. DO IT YOURSELF: Eloy Rodriguez recalls that "nobody ever told me about the road to success." Many of these researchers had to figure out for themselves what to do to become the best. Biological chemist Eloy Rodriguez, who holds the James A. Perkins Chair of Environmental Studies at Cornell University, recalls that during his academic climb, "nobody ever told me about going to the Ivy League institutions. Nobody ever told me about the network. Nobody told me about the road to success. Nobody told me how to network and told you which labs to work in." He adds, "There are very few Chicanos, African Americans, or American Indian scientists who are solidly ingrained into the science network that truly controls jobs, research funds, scholarships, and the direction of scientific research." The accomplishments of these scientists are even more remarkable when one considers the small number of minorities who receive doctoral degrees each year. According to a National Science Foundation report entitled Selected Data on Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 1995 (NSF 96-303), only 59 of the 15,625 science doctorates awarded to United States citizens and permanent residents in 1995 were granted to American Indians/Alaskan Natives. The numbers of African Americans and Hispanics who received scientific doctorates were comparably low at 486 and 491, respectively. Despite those low numbers, minority scientists are making major contributions to the scientific community. Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemical engineer Mario J. Molina was the first Mexican American to win a Nobel Prize for scientific research. Molina won the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on the chemical reactions resulting in the loss of the Earth's ozone layer. Physician Louis Sullivan was the first African American to be named as secretary of HHS. Physician Antonia Novello was named by President George Bush as the first Hispanic woman Surgeon General. Walter Massey became the first African American to head the National Science Foundation. President Bill Clinton named pediatrician Joycelyn Elders as the first African American woman Surgeon General. President Bush named cancer researcher Kenneth Olden as the first African American director of an institute of the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). NO WASTE: Kenneth Olden says his father did not understand why he was studying science instead of making money, These and other researchers are acknowledged as leaders in their fields. The Scientist interviewed a number of such leaders-whose accomplishments speak for themselves-to discuss how they jumped the hurdles in their roads to success. Obstacles Begin Early Poverty provides the first, and likely the highest, hurdle for some researchers. NIEHS director Olden grew up in a poor community in rural Tennessee. The first in his family to graduate from college, Olden says that science was something his impoverished community did not understand. "You are supposed to be a lawyer, go to medical school, be a teacher," all fields that were considered to be lucrative and secure, he recalls. Although his mother was supportive, "my father, all the way to the end, didn't understand why I was wasting all this time going to school, [continuing with] postdoctoral training," and not yet making any money. Olden adds, disappointedly, that he received no recognition for his scientific accomplishments from the community in which he grew up until a brief mention of his appointment as director of NIEHS appeared in Jet magazine. By then, his accomplishments included an instructorship at Harvard Medical School, a tenured research position at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and directorship of the Howard University Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Does it bother me?" Olden asks, referring to his lack of visibility in his own community. "It does a lot." Ecologist Shirley Malcom, director of education and human resources programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C., notes that poorly equipped schools were unable give her the training needed for later scientific success. She recalls that although the importance of education was stressed during her early years in segregated public schools in Birmingham, Ala., the schools had minimal laboratory equipment. This lack of equipment was a way, says Malcom, of "refusing to give you an opportunity to achieve, an opportunity to perform." By the time she entered college at the University of Washington in Seattle, "all of those deficiencies and weaknesses got magnified." She had to work extra hard to overcome those weaknesses. Furthermore, her outlook was limited. "When I was in school with an interest in science and math, I didn't know what you could do with that except be a physician." Between her junior and senior years of college, her adviser suggested she become a research scientist, just like him, and a light bulb went on in her head. Rodriguez says that his sights also were limited because he knew nothing about higher education in his isolated community. "We had to go 400 miles to see a university that granted Ph.D.'s; that's pretty far to go," he recalls. "For me to say . . . that I would be a professor at Cornell would indeed sound somewhat absurd and surreal." Once these minority scientists got to college and graduate school, role models were not abundant. "I saw no minority professors when I was in training as a scientist. I never saw one who looked like me; I never met one," recalls Rodriguez, who received his bachelor's degree in zoology and his Ph.D. in phytochemistry and plant biology from the University of Texas, Austin. Most of those interviewed stressed the importance of mentors, no matter what ethnicity, in helping them along on their roads to success. Earl D. Mitchell, Jr., associate vice president of cultural affairs and a professor of biochemistry at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, was encouraged by a chemistry professor at his college, Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black college in New Orleans. "My mentor in college was white. Getting me to go to graduate school, that was his goal for us from the beginning-to get me to do research." That extra push helped Mitchell get his 15 minutes of fame early in his career, he jokes. In 1968, he was a coauthor of a research paper on the metabolism of nepetalactone (the active ingredient in catnip), which "resulted in a cover story in Science." Mitchell appeared on the cover along with the cat he used to sniff out the ingredient (G.R. Waller et al., Science, 164:1281, 1969). HELPING HAND: Alfred Goldson credits his successful start to a supportive mentor. Mentors not only can spark an interest in a subject but also can pave the way for a young person's later successes. Alfred L. Goldson, professor and chairman of radiation oncology at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., is a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board, the presidentially appointed body that advises NCI. Goldson credits his mentor, the late Ulrich Henschke, whom he met during his last year of medical school, with making radiation oncology his "passion." After returning to Howard from a residency at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he worked with Henschke in developing radioactive implants for cancer therapy. Goldson says Henschke allowed him to take major credit early on in scientific papers for the technique called "intraoperative radiotherapy." These papers are now enshrined in a time capsule in the lobby of the American College of Radiology in Reston, Va., as one of the major radiation-related discoveries of the century. This, says Goldson, was "a ticket" to make his name. Tragically, while helping establish this technique in developing countries, Henschke and Goldson were in a small plane that crashed in Tanzania. Henschke died in Goldson's arms. "He was like a father to me," says Goldson, whose own father also was a physician. Those who did not have mentors had a difficult time finding networking opportunities, a rare commodity for minority scientists, according to the researchers interviewed for this story. "Sometimes, one is lucky to have a mentor who gives you more than information, gives you shortcuts to success," comments Rodriguez, who aids his graduate students at Cornell in their networking. Sumaya, who formerly was associate medical dean at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, points out that the inability to network was an obstacle that he had to overcome in his youth and his early career. "When I came out of high school, we didn't have a rush of Ivy League schools . . . coming to Brownsville, Texas," he recalls. Sumaya knows that even today, young Hispanics still have difficulty networking. In his position at HRSA, he is working to help minority students who attend historically black colleges and universities and predominantly Hispanic schools-both of which are funded under HRSA programs-learn how to establish and use networks. "It is my perception that once the network meets you and is able to have a face-to-face encounter with you, reservations about accepting you into the network are reduced," he notes. "Personal contact with established scientists may be a greater need for individuals like me who carry an usual, unfamiliar name-like 'Ciro Sumaya'-that triggers a greater sense of the unknown regarding personal identity and phenotype." Even later in a career path, networking opportunities may be lacking, adds Daniel Acosta, Jr., dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy in Ohio. He would have considered an administrative post at his former institution, the University of Texas, Austin, but he says he didn't know the right people to obtain such an appointment. "Suppose you're a professor with tenure and you want to go into administration; you have to know the ropes; you have to know someone, and Hispanics may not know as many people as non-Hispanics to open the door." Minority scientists, once on the road to success, often face burdens that non-minority scientists may never face and can't imagine: a devaluation of their contributions to minority students, excess burdens on their time in being a role model, the need to fight stereotypes, or numerous other demands. Oklahoma's Mitchell contends that his work with minority programs at the university is not considered as valuable a contribution as work with other university committees: "I've noticed that the kinds of credit one gets for service to minority programs is not quite given the same reward system." But Mitchell also has served on "general professional committees," giving him some "credibility" in his climb to tenure. Involvement in minority issues, he says, "takes its toll." Microbiologist John F. Alderete of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, finds that working with minority communities as a role model is a responsibility non-minority scientists do not have. In a recent interview (M. Jordan, SACNAS News, Summer 1996, page 1), he states that since receiving the Premio Encuentro Award-an award given by the television network Univision to Hispanic achievers-"I have given more than fifty keynote addresses to local, regional and national organizations on the issue of 'Hispanics and Higher Education.' These activities unrelated to my research have represented an enormous additional responsibility. My non-minority colleagues do not have to do any of this. They do not realize what life is like for me as a minority scientist." FASHION STATEMENT: Native American Judith Salmon Kaur has been asked why she isn't wearing moccasins. Scientists may also have to overcome stereotypes, maintains medical oncologist Judith Salmon Kaur of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. She was invited by NCI to help develop the Network for Cancer Control Research among American Indian and Alaskan Native populations because of her long-standing work with Native American communities. Kaur, who is Choctaw, says she sometimes hears insensitive comments from her physician colleagues. "I have had people who have asked me: Where are my moccasins; why don't I wear braids?" Although she credits her "native background" with "a profound influence on my holistic approach to cancer patients," she dresses for work like everyone does. "I do wear moccasins at home. I go to powwows where I wear my moccasins and native dress and enjoy dancing," she says. Even in the academic world, prejudice sneaks out. Cincinnati's Acosta recalls that his first job after graduate school was with his alma mater, the University of Texas, Austin. His first chairperson, who he indicates was particularly mean, told him he was hired because the department needed a minority. But, Acosta points out, he held an NSF non-minority scholarship, and he got the position based on his merits. The same individual told him to go into another field, that he would not make it in toxicology. Acosta eventually became chairman of the university's toxicology program. STEELY DETERMINATION: Yvonne Thornton left a hospital room after giving birth to take her medical board exams. Although the path may be difficult for any minority scientist, women find it particularly rough. Yvonne S. Thornton, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, and director of the Perinatal Diagnostic Testing Center at Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, posits that being female is harder than being a minority. "I've had more problems being a woman that I've ever had being a black. There's something in our society that says it's okay to be less civil to a female." She recounts such problems in her recent autobiography, The Ditchdigger's Daughters (New York, Plume, 1995). A documentary based on the book will be aired on the Family Channel February 23 at 7:00 p.m. Best And Brightest To overcome these obstacles, Thornton and the other scientists make sure they are the most qualified in their fields. "You have to be the best at what you do," states Thornton, who holds double board certification-by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Surgeons-in addition to having a rare specialty, maternal-fetal medicine. She adds that in medicine, board certification is the gold standard. Thornton's determination to excel led her to push herself well beyond the point at which others would stop: In her book, for example, she cites how she took board exams first through a terrible bout of morning sickness, and another time left her hospital room after giving birth just to take board exams. Photo: Carol Clayton HIGH STANDARDS: Shirley Malcom acknowledges that she expects a lot of herself. Malcom, too, sets tremendously high standards for herself. "I kind of put expectations on myself that could just drive you into the ground, almost, in terms of work. But that's okay." Aside from her job at AAAS, she serves on the National Science Board, the policy-formulating board of NSF. She also is a member of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Malcom acknowledges that some people imply that a member of a minority group may have gotten a job through special consideration. Thus, some may suspect that any minority worker who has a position may have received such a benefit. She recognizes that some people need affirmative action to get in the door. But, she adds, "It can get me in the door, but it doesn't do the work for me. I have to carry my own load. Even with it or without it, I'm going to have to work harder, perform better, be more diligent, be much more attentive, because I can't get by with work that is not excellent." Sumaya sees this attitude extending to young scientists: "We have to prepare ourselves well. I have a much stronger interest in getting people better prepared because then, when the opportunities occur, we are able to act on them, we can better perform well." "You have to prepare yourself for an opportunity if it presents itself," concludes Olden. "I think big; I dream big; I say, 'Why not?'" Myrna E. Watanabe is a science writer based in Yonkers, N.Y.

Achievers Demonstrate That Success In Science Can Come Despite Barriers

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