Academic Journeys
"Ask yourself, why do I want to go to graduate school?" said Lee Johnson, also a sixth-year student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins, who plans to start a postdoctoral fellowship this fall. "I was interested in physics and I thought there would be a lot of jobs in that field. It's not a bad reason, but it wasn't necessarily well thought out."

"Graduate study is a long, laborious and sometimes lonely trail. If you are going to choose graduate study and see it through, you have to find your passion," said Martha Jones, a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia University's Department of History, where she is an Irene Diamond (Leadership Alliance), Richard Hofstadter and President's fellow.

Victoria Love, a first-year student in the immunology Ph.D. program at Harvard Medical School, told of the two-year struggle she has had since graduating from San Diego State University deciding whether to take the Ph.D. or the M.D. route. "Once I was willing to make that commitment, I found many people who were willing to help and support me. Make sure you find other people-both faculty and students-who will help you keep your eye on the goal."

Ivonne Vidal Pizarro graduated from Miami Dade with an associate degree in English and went on to earn a B.A. in English and a B.S. in biology from Florida International University. She is currently pursuing graduate studies in the biological sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She warned the audience about competition that may not be in their best interest. "Too may people spend too much time comparing themselves to others. You have to look inside yourselves and see what you want to do."

Passion Is Key
"Medical school is not the only way to go," said Latasha Wright, a third-year graduate student and a Ford Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at the Sackler Institute at New York University. "If you have a passion for research, then graduate school is the right way, but you have to have an ally." Referring to both a good mentor and a network of peers, she added, "When things are getting hard and someone is being mean to you, you'll need someone else to say, 'You're smart... you're OK.'"

There Are No Failures
The closing address was given by Dr. Gilda Barabino, who teaches chemical engineering kinetics, biochemical engineering fundamentals and polymer science at Northeastern University, where she was recently appointed vice provost for undergraduate education. Dr. Barabino emphasized many of the points made by the graduate student panel, described the many curves in her road to a successful academic research career and urged students to persevere. "You have to have the ability to view failures as opportunities to learn," she said. "You have to maintain self-confidence, tune out negative messages, draw on the support of your family and friends and set your own academic and career path goals."

The Last Word
"Closing this session of the Leadership Alliance 2000 Annual National Symposium is a time of wonderful reflection," said Dr. Wyche. "This exercise of listening to the research that the students have done, seeing the intercourse of ideas and the peer bonding it promotes and discoursing with the people who have helped and guided the research activity-faculty mentors and the summer program directors-makes me very grateful for my continued association with the Alliance. I've seen our SR-EIP undergraduate students grow and mature. Now we are starting to see people from our programs coming out of the other side of the graduate school pipeline, and I take that as a reaffirmation of the consortium's mission and goals.

"To this year's new SR-EIP alumni: We honor you, we salute you and we want you to continue on your track. You are doing wonderful things, and you really are the next generation of educational and research leadership in this country. As members of underrepresented groups, we need mentors all along the way. We want you to know that there will be people who are going to be there to help and guide you in the institutions you have now come to know as the Leadership Alliance."