In the living room of a bungalow on the Humboldt State University campus in northern California, Rachel Mayfield, a Cherokee Indian who hopes to earn both an M.D. and a Ph.D., is rehearsing a medical school entrance interview. "If they ask if my medical education comes before everything else in my life, I'm going to have to say no," she declares. "Medical school is very important to me, but if someone in my family needs me, I'm on my way home. Family comes first."

"Rachel," says Russell Boham gently, "we need to talk."

Boham, who sports long black braids and has a bachelor's degree in biology and a Ph.D. in adult education, heads a program at Humboldt State that helps Native American students succeed in the sciences. His goal, he says, is to help students walk with one foot in their tribal society and the other in the larger world. Indian culture stresses cooperation rather than competition, Boham points out, and some tribes proscribe practices such as dissection. Family generally takes precedence over school or career, poverty is common, and both educational resources and role models are limited.

"We want to help students develop the traits that will enable them to succeed in the dominant society and at the same time strengthen their connection with their tribal culture," Boham explains. "We're not taking anything away from them. We're giving them additional tools, so they can walk in both worlds."

To do that, the program provides students with academic assistance, career advice and personal counseling, which helped keep Mayfield on track while weathering family problems. The program also helps students find summer research opportunities and introduces them to role models such as Boham, a Little Shell-Chippewa Indian, and members of organizations such as the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

Then there's the program house, which Mayfield calls her home away from home. Although they don't live there, students have access 24 hours a day and band together there. "We all have attacks of self-doubt," says Mayfield, who has a 3.8 grade-point average with a major in cellular and molecular biology and minors in applied mathematics and Native American studies. "When I feel like I don't belong in college and couldn't possibly go to medical school or graduate school, someone who is feeling more confident that day helps me through it. Then I do it for someone else who is down when I am up."

Mayfield grew up in a rural area in northern California, both on and off reservations. She finished high school and went to work. "I didn't know anyone who had gone to college, so I never even thought about it," she recalls. Lured back into school by a friend's physics teacher at Mendocino Community College, she met Boham at a Native American day there and braved a visit to Humboldt State. "For the first time I thought, 'I could do this,'" she says. She now works in the lab of her adviser, biology professor Jacob Varkey, who heads an HHMI-supported undergraduate biological sciences education program on the campus. She hopes to practice medicine and do genetics research on Native American health issues, such as the high rates of diabetes and breast cancer.

Although small, Humboldt State's program seems to be having an impact, attracting the highest percentage of Indian students in the California State University system. During the past three years, 10 Native Americans have majored in life sciences at Humboldt State. Of the four who were chosen to conduct research in the HHMI program, one is now in medical school, another is in graduate school, a third is applying to medical school, and the fourth is Mayfield. Last year, the university was recognized nationally with one of 10 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

"These are talented students," says Humboldt State President Alistair McCrone. "Our role is to catalyze and release those talents."

Jennifer Boeth Donovan

Photo: Shawn Walker

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Reprinted from the HHMI Bulletin,
May 2001, pages 28-33.
©2001 Howard Hughes Medical Institute