Makeecha Tenale Reed's professors call out as they see her sniffle her way down the hall, her voice cracking from a bad cold. "Makeecha! Are you better today?" asks geneticist John Williams, who also inquires about her medical school applications. Biology professor Velma Richardson drapes her arm around the young woman, and James H.M. Henderson—Tuskegee's 83-year-old statesman of science education— teases her about being named Miss Tuskegee University. Then he asks about her latest lab assignment.

Reed, a 21-year-old from North Carolina who has a 3.9 grade-point average, came to this historically black university for just such support. "Professors know me, and I feel appreciated," she says. "They drive me hard and they challenge me constantly." Reed hopes to become a pediatrician specializing in kidney disorders that are more prevalent among African American children.

Latasha Sellers, a student from Georgia, also hopes to become a physician—in her case, to provide primary care to an underserved community. As she entered her final semester at Tuskegee, she was preparing for several medical school interviews.

The small Alabama campus illustrates both the importance and limitations of the nation's historically black colleges and universities, which produce a disproportionate number of African American students who apply to medical school. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) notes that 18 Tuskegee students applied to medical schools in 1999 and eight were accepted. Xavier University of Louisiana topped the AAMC's list, followed by Howard University, Spelman College and Morehouse College, all of which, like Tuskegee, have received HHMI grants.

Graduates of these schools are much more likely to pursue M.D. rather than Ph.D. degrees; since 1996, only seven Tuskegee students have entered graduate school in the life sciences. Stephen Nurse-Findlay, 29, who graduated from Tuskegee in 1995 with degrees in both biology and chemistry, is among those who became physicians. A recent graduate of an M.D., M.P.H. program at The Johns Hopkins University, he looks back and says that Tuskegee's primary appeal was "the feeling of being very supported and nurtured. If you want to accomplish something, the people at Tuskegee are going to help you. I loved it."

Another Tuskegee alumnus, Emmitt Jolly, took the other path and will soon receive a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Photo: Thomas Martin

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