New Mexico State University has a 25-year track record of bringing minority students into the biomedical sciences through mentorship programs funded by the National Institutes of Health. Now the university has been awarded its largest NIH grants ever -; about $13 million over four years to support faculty research and to involve minority students in research. A $5.8 million grant awarded through the NIH's Support for Continuous Research Excellence (SCORE) program will support eight research projects and two pilot projects by faculty members from several NMSU departments. Awards range from $386,263 to $513,495 per faculty investigator. "This is a super grant," said biochemistry Professor Glenn Kuehn, administrator of NMSU's SCORE program. "The emphasis is on giving faculty the resources to do excellent research in the biomedical fields." The purpose of SCORE, according to the NIH, "is to provide financial assistance to competitive research programs in all areas of biomedical and behavioral research at institutions with significant under-represented minority student enrollment." About 48 percent of NMSU's undergraduate students are Hispanic, Native American or African-American. A grant expected to total more than $7 million through the NIH's RISE (Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement) program will support students - undergraduates as well as graduate assistants -; involved in research with faculty members. Biology Professor Marvin Bernstein will head NMSU's RISE program.

Organic chemistry students Delu Jiang, '00, left,  and Yi Zhang, '00, both recently earned their  master's degrees and are working toward  doctorates at NMSU. Photo by Michael Kiernan

The two programs are new components of the NIH Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) program, which NMSU has participated in since it began 25 years ago. A similar NIH program known as MARC - Minority Access to Research Careers - also has helped NMSU swell the ranks of minority researchers.

"As of January, 366 minority students have participated in our program over a 25-year period," Kuehn said. "Ninety-six percent of them completed the degree they were working toward here," including bachelor's and graduate degrees in fields like biology, biochemistry, microbiology, plant science, chemistry, animal science and molecular biology.

Of those who completed bachelor's degrees, 81 percent advanced to graduate or professional schools, he said - 158 went to graduate school in the biomedical sciences, 99 enrolled in medical schools, 55 entered professional fields like veterinary
medicine, pharmacy and medical technology, and eight went to dental school.

Sixty-two of the students who went to graduate school have completed doctorates, Kuehn said - five American Indian students, 12 African-Americans and 45 Hispanics.

"All of this got started 25 years ago at the National Institutes of Health when they hired a national director for this program," Kuehn said. "The man's name was Dr. Ciriaco Gonzales, and he was a 1954 graduate of NMSU."

Now director of the Division of Disadvantaged Assistance for the federal government's Health Resources and Services Administration, Gonzales was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater in 1999 for his national leadership in initiatives that have dramatically increased the diversity of students entering biomedical research and health professions.

"Ultimately," said Kuehn, "the best way to improve health care for all minority populations is to get more minority researchers and practitioners to conduct biomedical research."

Karl Hill

Five of the 10 research projects that will be supported by the $5.8 million NIH SCORE grant are headed by faculty members in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry: Jeffery Arterburn, Amudhu Gopalan, James Herndon, Colleen Jonsson and Glenn Kuehn.  Two faculty members in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, Mary O'Connell and Champa Sengupta-Gopalan, will also receive SCORE funding.  Two projects are located in the Department of Biology, with faculty members Elba Serrano and Kevin Oshima. One is a collaborative effort by Laura Thompson of the Department of Psychology and Wenda Trevathan of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.  The SCORE grant will generate $265,000 for new laboratory equipment and $1.88 million for basic laboratory supplies, Kuehn said. It also will allow the participating departments to hire 10 new technicians and postdoctoral research assistants.

From left, James Herndon, Yi Zhang, '00, and Delu Jiang, '00,  work in the lab.  Photo By Michael Kiernan

Organic chemistry is the foundation of the pharmaceutical industry, said James Herndon, an associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry at NMSU. Without new compounds there wouldn't be new drug candidates for biological testing. Herndon will lead one of 10 research projects at NMSU funded by the National Institutes of Health. The ultimate real-world objective of Herndon's research is to create easier access to highly complex organic structures for use in medicines. He plans to accomplish this by creating new reactions to make complex structures quickly from simple compounds. One of the goals of the NIH grant is to involve more students, especially minorities, in biomedical research.  Herndon has worked with students for many years and enjoys that aspect of his job.

He has worked with both undergraduate and graduate students, and believes that undergraduates should get more exposure to research if they're interested. They are more pressed for time, carry larger course loads and often work at part-time jobs, he noted. "It is important to work with undergraduate students because they should also participate in the rewards only a research-intensive university can offer."

Participating in research benefits students when they look for a job, he said, because they can show they have both experience investigating a specific area and good experimental skills.

For the NIH grant, he will specifically study the steroid class of compounds. Many steroids that are clinically important don't occur naturally, he said. "The number of structural modifications you can make is greater when you can start with simple components that don't have to be formed naturally."

For example, there is a popular birth control pill that is a synthetic steroid made by executing a few reactions to a natural steroid. "We will be able to make compounds like that, but we won't be limited to what nature gives us as a starting point," Herndon said.

Rachel Kendall
 

Laboratory experience plays a major role in inspiring NMSU science students to aim high in their careers, according to biochemistry Professor Glenn Kuehn, foreground. With Kuehn, from left, are Melisa Medrano, '00, Raul Arreola, Olivia George, Seth Frietze, '00, and Margie Rey, '00. Medrano has been accepted into the Sackler 'School of Biomedical Graduate Sciences at Tufts University in Boston. Arreola is among a select group of students doing summer research at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. George is working in NMSU biochemistry Professor Jim Hageman's lab this summer and is considering seeking a doctorate in molecular biology when she graduates from NMSU. Frietze received a scholarship to attend Harvard Medical School this fall. Rey has signed on for a two-year stint with the Teach for America program as a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher in Phoenix. Photo by Michael Kiernan

Ingram

Eiceman

Jani C. Ingram came to NMSU in 1982 knowing that she wanted to study chemical engineering or chemistry. "I knew I wanted to go into the sciences. I started off in NMSU's chemical engineering department and actually worked at the labs in Los Alamos a couple of summers," said Ingram, now an environmental surface chemist for Bechtel, a laboratory funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in Idaho Falls in southeast Idaho. As a senior at NMSU, Ingram was accepted into the Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) program and then the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) program.

It was in MARC where she met Gary Eiceman, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

"I helped Dr. Eiceman study polyaromatic hydrocarbons as a contaminant on soils," Ingram said. "The year I spent working with Dr. Eiceman really helped reinforce that I liked the science more than the engineering, and so I switched majors to chemistry."

Ingram went on to receive her bachelor's degree in chemistry from NMSU in 1985 and, in 1990, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Arizona.

"I've been involved with some different mentoring programs and it seems like there aren't too many Ph.D. Native American chemists or scientists," said Ingram, whose mother is a Navajo from Tohatchi, N.M. "Hopefully, that's going to change in the future."

At Bechtel, Ingram and a team of 10 other scientists study multi-disciplinary environmental problems and how contaminants change once they're in the environment. Currently, she's looking to develop methods to understand environmental surface chemistry which, coincidently, is similar to the MARC work she did in Eiceman's laboratory.

"I got my feet wet and I liked it, as opposed to imagining what conducting the research would be like."

She credits Eiceman and the MARC program with giving her much-needed experience in scientific research.

"I wasn't just doing someone else's laboratory dishes or setting up an experiment for someone else. I was really getting a chance to think through the process, develop the experiments and have input into the project. And now I'm doing that for a living but on a much higher scale," Ingram said.

"It was really a nice opportunity for me to say, 'Gosh, I kind of like this and I'd kind of like to be a Dr. Eiceman.' He was a very good mentor, easy to talk to, and he encouraged me to think instead of using me as just another set of lab hands."

Dan Trujillo, '92