Goal No. 1: Good Science. Goal No. 1: Diversity. - New York Times: BALTIMORE — There’s something striking about the laboratory of Michael F. Summers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It’s not the giant nuclear magnetic resonance machine that he uses to visualize molecules; it’s the faces of the people who work there.
Fifteen of the 32 researchers in Dr. Summers’s biochemistry lab, including a postdoctoral student and 3 Ph.D. candidates, are black. In the halls of American science, such representation is rare.
Dr. Summers, 49, works on two tracks: trying to cure AIDS and trying to create more diversity at the research bench. When he is not in the lab, he takes to the road with the university president, Freeman A. Hrabowski III, pushing universities to set up programs for minority students who are inclined toward science. At U.M.B.C., the Meyerhoff Scholarship Program has provided an intense scientific education to about 800 undergraduates so far.
