The Country Can Learn a Lesson
From These Students
By BRENT STAPLES
December 6, 2010
Twenty-one-year old Zakiya Qualls seemed almost too shy to speak at the start of our telephone conversation. But her tone was lively and her voice forceful when she talked about her senior-year science research at Howard University and her dream of finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease.“There are novel compounds all over the world that people have been using for hundreds of years that might prevent” diseases like Parkinson’s, she explained, sounding suddenly older. “Take curry. People in India eat it almost every day and they tend to have lower rates of neurodegenerative disease.” Then she plunged into the results of her experiments, which showed that an ingredient found in turmeric, used in curries, might protect neurons from toxins.
Ms. Qualls was one of more than 150 students who received awards last month at the 10th Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, in Charlotte, N.C. Sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, it attracted about 2,000 mainly minority students, along with hundreds of research program recruiters and professors who led seminars and judged competitions.
The conference was life-changing for Melissa Youssef, a 21-year-old senior and award winner from Furman University in Greenville, S.C., where she knows only a few science majors.
“It was heaven to be around people who were interested in the same thing,” she said. She went home determined to pursue both an M.D. and a Ph.D., even though it will probably take eight years.
The gathering had a similar effect on James McCann, a quiet young man from St. Edward’s University in Texas who wowed the conference with his work on a bacterium that preys on victims of cystic fibrosis. This was his introduction to the international world of biomedical research that he has his heart set on joining.
To preserve its economic future, this country needs to get many more American students — especially more minority students — excited about science.
Once the world’s leader in science education, the United States has fallen far behind. It ranks 21st out of 30 developed nations in terms of student performance on international science tests. It ranks 27th among developed nations in the percentage of students who graduate from college with degrees in the natural sciences and in engineering.
Right now only about 6 percent of young college graduates in this country have degrees in science or engineering, as opposed to about 10 percent in many developed nations. The numbers are far worse for minorities: only 2.7 percent of young African-American college graduates and 2.2 percent of Latinos.
This is the problem that keeps Freeman Hrabowski awake at night. Mr. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, led the committee that produced “Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation,” an eye-opening study issued by the National Academies, the country’s leading science advisory group.
The report sets the goal of nearly doubling the percentage of science graduates. To reach this goal, the country should at least triple the percentage of science and engineering degrees granted to underrepresented minority groups, who will represent nearly half the national population by the year 2050.
That won’t happen unless the states begin to renovate their weak math and science curriculums. Colleges and universities, with help from government, need to provide more financial aid for science students and reverse a disastrous pattern of attrition that now sees more than half of science students switching majors before they graduate.
Mr. Hrabowski leads by example at U.M.B.C., which now produces more minority scientists than any predominantly white institution in the country. Still, he is often met with skepticism when he tells other educators that they could have large numbers of high-performing minority students if they engaged those students meaningfully in the work of science itself. He hopes that this year’s conference in Charlotte will drive this point home.
The New York Times
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