VCU news

By Gary Robertson

With a gritty determination that included overcoming a teenage pregnancy in a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Inglewood, Calif., and starting college in her mid-30s, Iliana Ycute exemplifies a growing effort by the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Health Disparities to bring more underrepresented minorities into the biomedical sciences.

“Given the incidence of chronic disease in underrepresented populations, there is a need for more underrepresented people in research and in positions of leadership, so that they can ensure that those health problems are adequately addressed,” said Suzanne Barbour, Ph.D.
    
Barbour is a professor of biochemistry and director of several research training programs in the VCU Center on Health Disparities. A minority herself, Barbour said she was blessed that her grandfather was a scientist who in turn sparked her own interest in science.

But she said many minorities such as Ycute, a 37-year-old Latina, need a helping hand to fulfill their potential. Armed with grants approaching $1 million, the Center on Health Disparities is opening opportunities for underrepresented minorities with five different programs – others are in the pipeline -- including the HERO program in which Ycute participates.

“I want to pursue a research career. This was like a dream, the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Ycute, who is a rising senior majoring in health sciences with a minor in biology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in Carson, Calif. She has a 3.6 GPA, earned mostly through night classes after work.

Ycute learned about the VCU program from a federal alert that aims to increase graduate degree awards for students from underrepresented segments of society. She later visited the Web site of the VCU Center on Health Disparities for more information.

“I spoke to my husband and I spoke to my daughter… the ones who matter. I told them this is what I really, really wanted to do. It’s an amazing journey and I plan to see it through,” Ycute said, explaining her decision to leave her home in Torrance, Calif., and travel more than 2,600 miles across the country to Richmond.

She arrived at VCU on May 31, and moved into a dormitory with students participating in the summer program. She will return home on Aug. 2.

During her summer program, Ycute is spending 10 weeks at the VCU School of Medicine in a paid internship that pairs her with a mentor in the laboratory to learn research skills. Another aspect of the internship provides career development through brown bag lunches, where she receives information and counseling on how to apply for graduate programs and scholarships.

“My parents, they wanted me to cancel this trip,” Ycute said. “They were afraid it would change me. I try to explain to them what I’m doing. … Now they are very supportive, because they understand this is something I am ready for.”

Ycute said that when her daughter turned 18 she felt the time was right for her to pursue her education. That also meant the agonizing decision of giving up her job as a business office manager for a long-term care facility – she had worked her way up from a clerk over more than a decade -- because her employer said enrolling in college would interfere with her work.

This summer, during one of her frequent calls back home, Ycute said her husband told her that her daughter cried when she talked about how proud she was of her mother’s decision to pursue her dreams of an education.

In Barbour’s lab, Ycute is working with Chinese hamster ovary cells in conjunction with a DNA study. She praised her mentor W. Palmer Wilkins, Ph.D., for his help and patience.

“He’s put everything into perspective for me … broke it down so I can understand what I’m working on,” Ycute said. “So everything I do is very exciting, because it’s a piece of a puzzle and I’m contributing to that. And I feel great.”

Wilkins, who had been aiming for a career in industry, said his experience with Ycute made him think about considering teaching as a possible career.

“Working with Iliana has been fulfilling – teaching her to run experiments and the science behind them, and then to see her enthusiasm when she finally ‘gets it,’” Wilkins said. “She is very dedicated, very mature and wants to learn science.”

Barbour nodded with understanding.

“These programs change lives,” she said. “It’s changing Iliana’s life, it’s changing Dr. Wilkins’ life, it’s changing the life of Iliana’s daughter, and each of them will change other lives,” she said.

Barbour added that the lives of many other people will continue to be impacted as the result of the grants the Center on Health Disparities has already received from the National Institutes of Health, as well as the grants they hope to receive.
 
“Although our summer research programs have been successful, we’ve come to realize that we need programs that provide more continuous exposure to and immersion in research,” Barbour said.

For this reason, the COHD has secured additional grants from the National Institutes of Health to fund year-round research training programs targeted at:

• undergraduate freshman and sophomores and junior Ph.D. students through a program called the Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity and
• undergraduate junior and senior honors students through a program called the Minority Access to Research Careers.

The Center also expects to soon receive funding for two more year-round training programs for:

• recent college graduates, through the Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program and
• postdoctoral trainees, through a program called the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award.

To read about the programs the COHD has launched, go to http://www.dhsd.vcu.edu/programs/research/index.html