Flourishing in scientific careers - Black scientists on encouraging black students to take up science courses

Black Issues in Higher Education, Jan 9, 1997 by Gary M. Stern

When Mtingwa was a junior at MIT, the college hired its first Black physics professor, Dr. James Young. Though Mtingwa was doing quite well in science courses on his own, Dr. Young advised him which courses to take for graduate school and what graduate schools were looking for in a student, and offered encouragement in the pursuit of advanced courses. Mtingwa took the advice and earned a Ford Foundation fellowship to work on his doctorate at Princeton University.

Mtingwa, 46, says one of his most difficult burdens was being the only Black student in his MIT undergraduate classes and one of two (in a program of one hundred candidates) at Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1976. Although he does not feel that he experienced blatant racism, Mtingwa does believe that the faculty "never quite treated you in the same way and never gave you the same amount of time as others." He does say, however, that several white, Black and Japanese professors were very encouraging to him.

After graduating from Princeton University, Mtingwa worked at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab from 1980-1988 and was involved in building the system that produced the anti-proton particle, a type of nuclear particle. Keen on making more of an impact on future minority scientists, he turned to teaching full-time in 1989 at Clark Atlanta University and is now a professor of physics at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. Part of his mandate as professor of physics is to train more minority professors to become physics teachers in secondary education. About thirty of the physics majors in his courses are African American.

"We try to give them the tools, make sure they have the courses to apply for fellowship, and provide encouragement. With affirmative action being dismantled, there are enough obstacles out there," Mtingwa says.

Starting With a Chemistry Set

When Dr. Anthony Johnson, now forty-two and the chairman of the Department of Physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, was in fourth grade, he started experimenting with a chemistry set--a Christmas present from his father, a bus driver, and mother, a buyer for a department store.

From then on, Johnson was encouraged to pursue science as his avocation. At Tilden High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., he took a rigorous science program which included classes in chemistry, biology and physics. Johnson's physics teacher encouraged him to attend his own alma mater, New York's Polytechnic University. And at the Polytechnic Institute, one of his professors, Donald Scarl, encouraged Johnson to apply for an AT&T Bell Labs minority fellowship, which he was granted in 1974.

At Bell Labs, Johnson was once again encouraged, by Dr. David Auston to pursue experiments in high-speed lasers and optoelectronics. "He let me go and find my way in this million dollar lab and allowed me to make mistakes. It was important for my confidence," says Johnson, who worked on his Ph.D. at the City College of New York while spending summers working at Bell Labs for a stipend. After earning his doctorate in physics in 1981, Johnson conducted research in high-speed, fiber-optic communication at Bell Labs for 15 years. His research in voice, video and data communication, concentrated on linking multimedia to home computers.