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"We have assembled … 377 strong, representing 110 colleges
and universities from all over the country … for the seventh
time to celebrate your scholarship, your representations of excellence,"
said Moderator John Gates as he opened the 2002 annual, national
Leadership Alliance Summer Symposium (LASS). LASS, themed "Careers
in Research: Strategies and Choices," was held for the second
year at the Evergreen Conference Center in Stone Mountain, Georgia,
just outside of Atlanta, the last weekend in July, the 26th through
the 28th.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, is your moment, and we invite
you to exercise your excellence -- at this moment at this symposium.
You represent the future scholars, educators, researchers, public
servants … you are the Leadership Alliance," Gates added
during the opening ceremony held at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 26.
Following Gates, Alliance Interim Director Michael Plater, emphasized
the importance of students networking with each other and the
graduate school faculty and administrators in attendance. He encouraged
students to avail themselves of as much information and experience
as possible.
"You are here in a sea of overwhelming intelligence. For
the rest of your life, you will be working with the people right
here in this room. They will be your colleagues -- you will publish
with them, see each other's names in journals and even compete
with them," Plater said. "We are here to help you, and
you need to take advantage of all that is here for you. So, sit
in on as many presentations as you can, go to the poster sessions,
try to give support to each other - learn how to become a part
of an intellectual community."
Opening Keynote
Gates introduced the keynote speaker, Dr. Clifton Poodry, director,
Minority Opportunities in Research, National Institute of General
Medical Studies, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Poodry,
who spoke on "Developing Leaders," asked the participants
if they were happy with minority representation as it is in the
sciences and other research fields and challenged them, if they
were not happy, to think about what they could do to change it.
"When you look back on you life, will the world have been
a better place?" Dr. Poodry asked. "Will your communities
and your families have been better for you having been here? That
is the essence of the leadership that the Alliance is trying to
develop here."
Dr. Poodry emphasized that the assembled undergraduate students
should take every opportunity to let their reliability, trustworthiness,
conscientiousness, perseverance and willingness to work hard and
live up to their potential shine - at the symposium, in their
classes and research experiences, in their lives and work because
you never know who is watching and how they may help you in the
future.
"You've all heard the expression "It's not what you
know; it's who you know," he said. "Well, wipe that
expression out of your mind because it's wrong. It is not who
you know; it is who knows you and how they know you."
After the opening session, symposium participants enjoyed karaoke
and dancing.
Ph.D. Candidates' Panel
Saturday morning the symposium began in earnest with an early
morning breakfast and panel discussion on "The Graduate School
Experience." Six current Ph.D. candidates, all former research
interns and three former LASS participants, described their academic
journeys and offered realistic words of encouragement to the undergraduate
participants.
"You can do it," José Rivera-Feliciano assured
the symposium participants. Rivera-Feliciano, a fourth year Ph.D.
candidate in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard Medical
School who earned his B.S. from the University of Puerto Rico
-Mayaguez 1in 998 recalled his own SR-EIP internship and LASS
participation. He admitted that, at the time, he looked around
at the quality of research that was presented, compared his own
research experience and project and was startled to realize that
he then believed he really could do graduate school, too.
Leilah McNabb, a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in psychiatric genetics
in the pharmacology department at the University of Pennsylvania,
confided that she has always known that she wanted to be a scientist
- ever since she watched Mr. Wizard on TV as a child. She advised
students that graduate school was about both ideology and politics
and that their personal ideology about their field of study and
future contributions to it would help them through the department
and academy politics that they would surely encounter.
James Wilson was days away from completing his Ph.D. in history
from Princeton and had already accepted an assistant professorship
in African and World History at Wake Forest University in North
Carolina. He described his circuitous route to graduate school
from his B.A. in political science and English from the University
of Texas (Austin) to three years of teaching English in Kenya
for the Peace Corp (where he discovered he wanted to be a historian
of the African experience) and foundation work on African issues.
Angela McMillan, a third-year graduate student in the Anthropology
Department at Brown University, received her B.A. in sociology
with minors in anthropology and fine arts from Morgan State University.
"I've always known that I wanted to pursue higher education,
to get a terminal degree and to go on past undergraduate school,"
she said. "Looking to the bigger picture and the smaller,
more immediate concerns, the major decision for me after I finished
college was where was I going to pursue my degree and in what
discipline? Then, what am I going to do after graduate school?
What is my contribution going to be?" She advised LASS participants
to first consider what they want to do with their lives when they
are trying to decide what graduate school and what subject area.
Then, trust their instincts and follow their passion.
Kristy McMorris, a fully-funded, MacCracken Fellow in the comparative
literature doctoral program at New York University, spoke of feeling
the pressures of representation: " I felt I had to represent
Howard University (where she earned her B.A.), HBCUs (historically
black colleges and universities) and black women … If I mess
up they may never take another one!" McMorris also spoke
of the pressures of coming to a majority graduate school "having
my own knowledge base, which was not necessarily the same knowledge
base as my classmates" and advised students "to continue
to navigate your own personal life while being socialized into
the intellectual community." When the frustrations of the
academic life begin to mount, it is being your own person that
will get you through, she said.
Kafui Dzirasa, a former University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Meyerhoff Scholar and second year M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Duke
University Medical School, shared five tools for life that he
learned at UMBC. They are 1) Dream - begin with the end in mind;
"I want to be one that influences the world and makes a difference;
at this point my goal is to pursue knowledge (MD) and wisdom (PhD),"
he said. 2) Desire - "You have to have a desire to follow
your dream." 3) Determination - "It is what you do when
the path branches, and you reach a dead end, but you have to keep
going. You have to decide that beyond a shadow of a doubt you
will be a success." 4) Discipline - "Sometimes, it's
the little steps that get you where you are going" 5) Disposition
- "It is where you are, your outlook, and where you want
to be. The trick is to widen your focus so that you can line the
two up even when it looks like where you are going is nowhere
near where you want to be," he advised.
The core feature of the symposium, the student research presentations,
began after the breakfast session on Saturday with the oral presentations,
resumed after the luncheon session and culminated after the Sunday
morning topic table discussions with the poster presentations.
One hundred and thirty-six oral and 99 poster presentations from
the undergraduate students' SR-EIP internships covered subjects
that included working memory in brain function, decompressing
Java computer language, process modeling for e-commerce, eating
disorders and food-borne pathogens, Southern desegregation, racial
socialization and the influence of the mass media.
The Application Process
Saturday afternoon, Doctors Joel Oppenheim, associate dean, NYU
Medical School; David Redman, associate dean of academic affairs
at Princeton, and Jocelyn Spragg, faculty director of Minority
Programs for Harvard Medical School and authors of the Leadership
Alliance companion guide, Tips on Preparing for and Applying to
Graduate School, led the luncheon session on the "Graduate
School Application Process."
"You are going to need to spend more time on your own thinking
about organizing what you are doing," Dr. Spragg advised.
"The graduate school application process takes time: writing,
interviewing, dealing with all of the follow up and working hard
to get your applications in early. A student said to me recently
that it is basically a part-time job."
The panel recommended planning ahead, developing time management
skills and sacrificing entertainment and activities to study for
GRE. They emphasized carefully writing your personal statement
to express who you are and why you want to go graduate school
and networking with faculty so you will be able to obtain three
(no more than four) recommendations from faculty members or research
mentors who can comment specifically on your abilities.
Responding to questions on how to explain "blemishes"
on a transcript, they suggested having your recommenders do it
and reemphasized choosing and preparing writers who know you and
your abilities well. If explaining personal problems, make sure
the explanation shows how you overcame some obstacle or made a
positive effort to correct a problem.
They reminded students to be sure to check whether the department
to which they are applying requires GRE subject tests. "Scores
are reasonably important in the decision process," said Dr.
Redman, "but not as important as your prior preparation,
your letters of recommendation, your personal statement and either
your research experience or samples of your work that you include
with your application."
Saturday night, after the oral presentations were completed,
participants enjoyed a performance of Dreamgirls, the Broadway
musical about the costs of success. It starred Jennifer Holiday
in her Tony Award winning role at the historic Fox Theater in
Atlanta.
Changes in the GRE Format
Students were up early Sunday morning for the breakfast table
discussions hosted by the various faculty mentors and program
administrators participating in the symposium. Topics included
"Women in Science," "MD/PhD - What is it?"
"How to Choose a Graduate Program," "Impact of
GRE and MCAT on Admission," " Being a Minority in a
Majority Institution" and "Is There Life During Graduate
School?"
After breakfast, Thomas Rochon, executive director of the Educational
Testing Service's (ETS) Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Program,
informed the conference participants that the GRE is changing
its format. This is the first major change in the format of this
nationally recognized step in graduate school admissions in its
60-year history. Starting October 1, 2002, the analytical section
of the general test will consist of two essays to be written by
the test taker. The verbal and quantitative sections remain multiple-choice,
and the entire test is still computer-assisted. Read complete
article on Dr. Rochon's presentation
on the new GRE General Test.
Thank You
"You have helped to define my career, and your example has
helped to define my own aspirations. You cannot imagine the impact
you have had on us all," said Moderator John Gates, associate
director of Africana Studies and the Institute of Afro-American
Affairs for NYU, at the closing session of the conference as he
presented James Wyche with a book of anecdotes and remembrances
from the participants. Dr. Wyche, who was the executive director
of the Alliance from its inception until last year, is now vice
provost and dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at the University
of Miami in Florida. "We are thankful for your vision, for
your leadership, for your friendship, and we say to you simply,
perhaps too simply, thank you," Gates added.
Kofi Bota, the Alliance' s institutional coordinator from Clark
Atlanta University and vice chairman of the Program Committee,
presented Dr. Wyche with a crystal globe on a pedestal (similar
to the Alliance logo). "I come to praise and to thank, on
behalf of the Leadership Alliance, our friend and my friend, Jim
Wyche, for having brought us this far," he said. "We
all know that these are difficult times - when an ill wind blows
across the economic landscape of America. It is also a time when
the ideas of equal opportunity and diversity seem to be taking
a backseat to anxiety over our economic future and the social/cultural
fabric of our country. This is precisely the time that we need
the kind of leadership and vision that Dr. Wyche has brought to
the affairs of the Leadership Alliance over the past 10 years.
"Jim Wyche's actions have unfailing been marked by stability,
by integrity and by modesty," continued Dr. Bota. "His
dedication of purpose has been inspiring to us all. He is, as
you young people say, awesome."
Accepting his tribute, Dr. Wyche thanked the Alliance staff, the
students who participate in the SR-EIP, the LASS and other programs,
the faculty mentors, the institutional coordinators and the summer
program coordinators who worked so hard and so well with him over
the last decade. "One of my dreams was to have research intensive
and teaching intensive institutions working hand-in-hand as bona
fide partners, bringing together the best of the academic educational
system," he said. "I would like to thank all of you
for making that dream a reality. You are indelibly inscribed on
the pages of my career. I am very touched, and I take this (tribute)
with me with a great and profound sense of feeling. Please know
that if I can contribute anything to the Leadership Alliance in
the future, I will."
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