It’s an idea that caught on like wild fire and quickly became a reality that’s exceeding everyone’s expectations. While talking with Carol Gross, a researcher known for mentoring and encouraging minority scientists, Emmitt Jolly, a second-year student in the Program in Biological Sciences, came up with the idea of donating to universities -- which are predominantly minority and not as well-funded as other campuses -- the extra scientific journals and text books that clutter departmental libraries. Gross secured some funding for shipping out the journals and from there, the effort, now under the auspices of the Scientific Literature Redistribution Program (SLRP), took off.

Melissa Michelitch and Emmitt Jolly.

Since they sent out an email announcing the program in October, SLRP committee members, including Jolly and Melissa Michelitch, have been overwhelmed with donations of journals and text books. The first shipment went out Friday to Tuskegee University, a predominately African-American university and Jolly’s alma mater. “We’re keying in on at least one African-American school, one majority Hispanic school and one Native-American school,” Jolly said.

Jolly and Michelitch said that such universities don’t have research programs -- never mind research libraries. The goal of SLRP is to give such institutions resources that may encourage minority students to become scientists. “There are very few minorities in science,” Jolly said. “I don’t think it’s the inability of these students to do good science. It’s more that they weren’t trained in science or didn’t have the opportunity. If they have the resources there the schools could get more and more minorities interested in science.”

Soliciting interest in their endeavor has been easy, said Jolly and Michelitch, whose colleagues on the committee also include UCSF graduate students Ben Alba, Sally Horne and Hikari Yoshihara. Suggestions for schools to which to donate have been pouring in. And because UCSF has an abundance of journals -- the library carries 1,400 different scientific journals and many departments and faculty have their own libraries and subscriptions--SLRP has been inundated, so much so, they need additional space for storage. Financial support was given by the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics under chair Reg Kelley. “Without this support we would not be functionally able to aid disadvantaged institutions at the level we may do now,” Michelitch said.

Journals waiting to be delivered.

SLRP has also received feedback from other universities wanting to donate journals. A woman at Texas A&M, who is from Cameroon, heard about the program and is now soliciting money from the Cameroon community in Austin to redistribute journals and books to her native land. “Some things that we take for granted they’ve never seen yet,” Jolly said. The UCSF group is hoping that other universities will follow its lead and institute redistribution programs of their own.

As a Ford Foundation fellow, Jolly has connections with minorities in academic programs throughout the country and has received a lot of ideas and leads through them. The foundation is dedicated to increasing the number of minority professors--a need, Jolly says, that is apparent at UCSF. “There’s only one African-American professor in PIBS,” Jolly said. African-American graduate students are also scarce at UCSF, he said--Jolly was one of the first African-American students in PIBS and is one of only two African-Americans out of the over 200 students now enrolled in the program. The faculty and administration, Jolly emphasized, want minorities to feel welcome in the program. “The Graduate Curricular Committee and the Biochemistry and Biophysics department have been very supportive of my academic pursuits and endeavors,” Jolly said.

“It’s easier to get interested in something if you see people like yourself there,” Michelitch said. “In the ghetto, if you talk to a kid and say ‘how would you like to be a scientist,’ the kid says, ‘black people don’t do that,’” Jolly said. “The picture that forms is of a Caucasian male who’s in charge of teaching the class.”

Even if one does pursue science despite not being able to identify with the prevalent images, economics can create an obstacle. “If we didn’t get special scholarships or fellowships as undergraduates we wouldn’t be here,” said Michelitch, who received fellowships so she could do research instead of working part-time to support herself.

“If a school can’t afford journals they almost certainly are not going to have a research program and students need a research program to get into graduate school,” Michelitch said. SLRP hopes the availability of scientific literature in such schools, in conjunction with summer research training programs for minorities, such as the one at UCSF, will inspire budding scientists to pursue a career in science. “Two of the people on the committee, Ben Alba and I, went through the Summer Research Training Program,” Jolly said. “Then we went to UCSF and now we want to give back.”

If interested in becoming a SLRP volunteer, email Michelitch at mmichel@itsa.ucsf.edu or Jolly at ejolly@itsa.ucsf.edu.

By Paula Murphy

First appeared 11/17/97