NIH Biologist Kicks Off CALC Speaker Series

The first speaker in the CALC Speaker Series, supported by the $2.7 million HSI STEM Grant, is Geoffrey Lovely, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health. His topic is V(D)J recombination, the process whereby white blood cells in the immune system recombine elements in the genetic roadmap to identify and destroy the immense variety of invaders that cause disease.  

CALC—“Caminos a Las Ciencias” or Pathways to Science—is a strategic initiative designed to significantly enhance and expand the curriculum and resources offered to Hispanic and low-income students. CALC is made possible by a $2.7 million Hispanic Serving Institutions Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (HSI STEM) and Articulation program grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Saint Mary’s has been designated a Hispanic Serving Institution because of its 26 percent Hispanic population, making the College eligible for federal funds earmarked to help underrepresented students.

“Our mission is to improve the outcomes for these students,” said Dr. Ameer Thompson, the director of the CALC program. “Every student who comes to Saint Mary’s and wants to study science should have a chance to do so.”

And why not? One impediment is the outdated and intimidating notion that scientists should look and be a certain way. “Students who are first-generation or persons of color may be the only one in a classroom who represents their background. It can be very alienating,” Thompson said. And it’s not that anyone is necessarily rooting against them or behaving negatively towards these young scholars, he added. “It’s just the overwhelming feeling of being ‘the other.’”

So, the CALC Program—in addition to offering academic support through the STEM Center in Assumption Hall—will work to build a sense of community for students. “Heaped on top of their own anxiety about being different, they’re also participating in a particularly difficult curriculum, studying subjects such as calculus or organic chemistry,” said Thompson, a trained scientist from an underrepresented background, who can personally identify with the students he seeks to help.  

“I’m from Oakland, grew up on welfare for a time,” he said. “I was raised by a single mother.” But he went on to attend community college, received a bachelor’s degree in biology from California State University, Sacramento, and earned a doctorate from Cornell University, where he studied biophysics and physiology. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at Columbia University with Nobel laureate Martin Chalfie.

Thompson has also worked in intellectual property law, taught physiology, and has spent more than 10 years volunteering with such education programs as the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program and the East Bay College Fund. He hopes his own example will inspire Saint Mary’s students. And he feels like he has a spiritual debt to pay.

“People from my background don’t necessarily make it to where I am. I’ve been given all these chances. To take all these gifts and not give back would be irresponsible and just plain wrong.”

In fact, a key element of the CALC Speaker Series is the diversity of the speakers who will come to the campus. “We want the students to hear from top-notch scientists, first and foremost,” Thompson said. “But we also want them to see themselves and their own potential in these men and women.” The first speaker, Lovely, is an African American who finished his undergraduate degree at UC Davis in just three years and earned his PhD at Caltech, studying with Nobel laureate David Baltimore.

“We want to demonstrate to our students that their differences are not just something to overcome, but to celebrate. This program is here to leverage the strengths they already have,” he said. “They have a lot to offer and if we help them harness their strengths and everything they bring to the table, they are going to be successful students and world citizens who will really make an impact.”

Lovely’s speech is at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 27 in Galileo 201. A reception will follow at the STEM Center in Assumption Hall. Thompson wants students to be sure to come to the reception and “get a chance to talk to this guy,” he said. “They will realize he is just like them, from a background similar to theirs. By making him concrete, his path concrete, we demonstrate that his achievements are achievable. I hope to do that for all of the speakers in this series.”