For any newcomer, adjusting to the rigors of life at a large university can be daunting. But for the members of minority groups, the adjustment frequently includes a sense of social and cultural isolation-the nagging feeling that they really don’t belong. In response, the university has launched several programs for attracting and developing the talent and diversity it needs. Here are the snapshots of three students and one faculty member who stand out in the crowd.

Janora McDuffie: Freshman on a fast track

Click to read photo caption. Photo by Neil Caudle.

Janora McDuffie had an edge when she entered UNC-CH as a freshman this fall. She had conducted a scientific research project and presented the results to scientists and other students, all before setting foot in a college classroom. McDuffie gained this experience through the Dental Research Center’s Minority High School Research Apprentice Program, which is sponsored by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

McDuffie conducted her project in the lab of Patrick Flood, associate professor of periodontics, as part of Flood’s research on how the immune system detects and destroys antigens, which are proteins, toxins, or other foreign substances that trigger the body’s immune response. “Cancer is an example of a fatal antigen that has slipped past the responses of the immune system,” McDuffie says.

As she conducted tests on the DNA of rats to determine how an antigen can escape the body’s immune response, McDuffie got a taste of the challenges that a laboratory scientist faces every day. “The techniques I used need a steady hand, and very sterile conditions, and it takes a lot of practice to become very good,” McDuffie says. “Because I was in the learning stages, many of the procedures came out contaminated, or something went wrong.” But despite a few unexpected results, the hands-on experience was worthwhile, McDuffie says. “I learned a tremendous amount. It was very helpful in my high school classes, and will continue to be helpful as I go to college.”

Linwood Watson: A groove of one’s own

Linwood Watson, a junior who hopes to attend medical school, says that as a freshman his biggest concern was “finding my niche here.” The friendships he formed by joining the Carolina Indian Circle made his adjustment easier, he says. He was encouraged by the success of a Native American senior who was accepted into medical school. “That was a big inspiration to me, even though it was just him,” he says. “I still think about that all the time. He was my role model, and he still is.”

Other Native American students have more difficulty adjusting than he did, Watson says, because many of them grow up in close-knit Native American communities. It’s a “big shock” for them to come to a large campus like UNC-CH where there are few Native Americans, he says.

Watson is now vice-president of the Carolina Indian Circle and a mentor to four freshmen through the Office for Student Counseling’s Minority Student Advisory Program. “I just keep an open ear, try to be a friendly face,” Watson says. “And at least once every two weeks I’ll sit down with them and have a fairly lengthy discussion about how their classes and their adjustment here are going. I’m happy to say they all seem to be making the adjustment very well.”

Goldie Byrd: Teaching renewed by research

Participating in the Partnership for Minority Advancement in the Biomolecular Sciences (PMABS) has brought North Carolina Central University (NCCU) many benefits, including opportunities for faculty to get involved in cutting-edge research and obtain grants to improve labs and computer technology. But Goldie Byrd, professor of Biology at NCCU, says that one of the most important benefits is the increased opportunity for faculty at historically minority universities (HMUs) and at UNC-CH to work together to improve biomolecular science education at North Carolina’s HMUs.

Against the Numbers

If you were a Native American student at UNC-CH in Fall 1994, you might have felt a little out of place. Of the 24,463 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students enrolled that semester, only 139 students, or .6 percent, were Native Americans. The number of African American students was larger, at 2,161, or 8.8 percent. Role models for these students were somewhat scarce, with only two Native American and 93 African American faculty members on campus.

The University and the graduate school want to see more African American and Native American students represented in graduate school, but no specific numbers have been mandated, says Henry Frierson, associate dean for fellowships and special programs. “We earnestly try to increase the number of minority graduate students represented and bring in strong students who will have high likelihoods of completing their degrees,” he says.

Ensuring that African American and Native American freshmen find their place at UNC-CH is one of the functions of the Minority Student Advisory Program, which is offered by the Office for Student Counseling. Each of these freshmen is matched with a sophomore or junior who meets with the freshman twice per month, says Harold Woodard, interim associate dean in the Office of Student Counseling.

“It makes them more open and more natural, and therefore more interactive with others on campus,” Woodard says. “It makes them feel that, ‘well, this place is for me, I can stake a claim to it, I can achieve, I can get involved-in fact, I should.’”

The history of the University and of the South is not easily erased, says Harold Wallace, vice chancellor for University Affairs. “Oftentimes when we look at our present endeavors we tend to forget our past,” Wallace says. “We must recognize that around forty years ago blacks were excluded from the campus, in terms of admitting students and hiring faculty and senior staff. This was by law, by custom, tradition, and general practice. You have to convince minority groups that this long history of almost one hundred and fifty years has been reversed, and now we do welcome you and want you here.”

—Angela Spivey

“PMABS has given us a platform upon which to discuss similar goals, similar ways to solve problems, and ways of getting the administration to understand what faculty and students need in the sciences,” Byrd says. Six other North Carolina universities are working with UNC-CH and NCCU-Pembroke State, Fayetteville State, North Carolina A&T State, Elizabeth City State, Shaw, and Johnson C. Smith.

Seventy percent of the minority students who go to college in North Carolina go to HMUs, says Walter “Skip” Bollenbacher, director of PMABS and professor of biology at UNC-CH. “If we as a graduate research university do not tap into those excellent minority institutions,” Bollenbacher says, “we’re never going to see diversity in our professional workforce.”

Faculty at the HMUs are working to empower their students to become first-rate scientists. They have introduced advanced biology courses at their schools, are working to get funding for molecular laboratories where students can apply what they learn, and are developing a laboratory manual tailored to undergraduate students’ needs.

Students at the HMUs are also learning from the research projects their professors are conducting with UNC-CH scientists during summer research sabbatical fellowships. While on her sabbatical Byrd worked with Kenneth Bott, professor of microbiology, on a genetic analysis of the heat-shock response of Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterium that has been implicated in the AIDS virus. Submitting successful grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has enabled Byrd to continue this work. At NCCU, she is the principal investigator on a project funded by an NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award. Byrd is mentoring one undergraduate and three graduate students as they help conduct this research. She’s also working on a related project at UNC-CH under a supplement to Bott’s NIH grant.

“North Carolina Central University is committed to making contributions to the scientific community, even though it is a small liberal arts college,” Byrd says.

Tomeiko Ashford: Yes, go to graduate school

When asked what she wants to do after graduate school, Tomeiko Ashford replies, “I really would like to teach on the college level, to become a professor.” Now in her second year of graduate study in English at UNC-CH, Ashford is developing the research skills a professor needs. She started developing them while still an undergraduate at the University of Florida through UNC-CH’s Minority Undergraduate Research Assistants Program (MURAP), in which students design and complete a 10-week research project under the direction of a faculty fellow from the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. MURAP is part of the Graduate School’s Summer Pre-Graduate Research Experience program.

In the summer of 1993, Ashford completed her research project under the direction of Perry Hall, assistant professor of African/Afro-American studies. Ashford studied how contemporary African American women writers such as Ntzoke Shange and Toni Morrison use creative devices such as spirituality and folklore.

“I was concerned with why these particular women have now enjoyed a twenty-year success over African American male writers, why these women are being read,” Ashford says. “I found out that a lot of the women use these devices to offer some kind of healing for the community, to offer renewal and transcendence of harsh realities. It’s appealing to people who have traditionally suffered any type of inequity or oppression.” Ashford turn-ed this project into a 60-page honors thesis for her undergraduate degree.

In the Summer of 1995, she returned to work with MURAP, helping to review the undergraduates’ papers and giving them advice on applying to graduate school. “I firmly believe,” Ashford says, “that it’s our job as minority graduate students to reach back and try to pull up the undergraduates while promoting the earning of advanced degrees.”.