Looking Back, Looking Forward
Summer 1998 | By Skip Bollenbacher, PMABS Director
I can't quite believe that we are eight years into PMABS. This passage of time has seen partner universities reform curricula, bolster research programs, and advance underrepresented students into science careers. These dramatic successes are directly attributable to the creativity, dedication, and labor of partner faculty. Truly, we have learned that we can achieve together what individually we could have barely imagined.Along the way we have learned that going the distance together requires acknowledging our differences and involves collaborating to address the individual needs and goals of each partner. Customization instead of standardization, and doing what we know we need to do rather than what others tell us we should do, have been pivotal strategies for achieving PMABS's vision of diversity in the next millennium's biomolecular science work force.
Now, just as we have PMABS working smoothly, our profession confronts us with new obstacles that challenge our sustained growth and success. There simply are not enough of us and our support personnel to respond to all that we must do. Scientific knowledge has exploded and, unless creatively managed, could overwhelm our capacity to learn and teach at the cutting edge. Society's far-ranging demands for resources are limiting those available to higher education, placing us in the position of having to do more, better, faster, with less. And the advent of the information technology age demands that we learn, work, and teach using new tools - or be left behind.
At first, I felt overwhelmed by these obstacles. But PMABS partners' accomplishments, like those captured in articles in this newsletter, tell me that we have actually confronted and overcome the most difficult and important challenge: crafting an innovative and highly effective partnership that transcends institutional, cultural, ethnic, and distance boundaries.
To meet the new challenges, PMABS is strengthening and increasing its collaborations. Boston University's CityLab has joined with us to provide secondary school outreach initiatives, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics has signed on to create a Collaborative Electronic Learning Laboratory that integrates information technology into all our initiatives, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund has committed resources so high school students can get hands-on lab experience. The administrative and academic units at partner universities are providing significant resources, insight, and expertise. PMABS has moved forward with its third Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant application, focusing on the obstacles before us and how to meet them. And we are discussing with federal agencies innovative grants programs that directly address issues we have learned stand in the way of our students' and our profession's success. I was somewhat hesitant to take stock of PMABS's accomplishments, uncertain of what I might find and intimidated by all that we must do next. However, having taken that look, I have seen a special kind of success built upon a willingness to take on the most difficult tasks, and now believe that we grow and learn through our failures.
This appraisal has also shown me what Booker T. Washington meant when he stated, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." By his measure, PMABS partners have been remarkably successful. In fact, overcoming obstacles has become a trademark of the Partnership, and I have no doubt that, as we refine our collaboration, we will establish a quality process of biomolecular science education that ensures that the practice of science reflects the diversity of our society.
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