Group advances Hispanics, Native Americans in science

As an assistant professor at MUSC’s National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Angela Moreland, Ph.D., has spent her career reaching out to underserved communities. When she discovered one such community right here at MUSC, she decided to do something about it.

Moreland, who is Native American, knows how hard it can be for underrepresented minorities to gain a foothold in medicine and the sciences. Finding themselves trapped in silos of self-doubt and low expectations, often from a young age, many students from underrepresented minority groups are not given the chance to gain the prerequisites needed to pursue science in college. Even fewer go on to careers in science.

“People just assume they’re not going to go into science,” she explained, “so they aren’t pushed. They aren’t given the resources they need to succeed.”

SACNAS, the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, aims to change that. When Moreland attended the group’s annual meeting three years ago, she saw the good it can do firsthand, but was disappointed to find there was no local chapter at MUSC or in the Charleston area.

“There’s a huge gap in South Carolina and in Charleston,” she said. “So, we decided to start a local chapter.”

Rather than starting a chapter solely for MUSC, Moreland and a few others aimed higher. “We decided that we wanted to start a professional chapter involving not just MUSC, but also the College of Charleston, Boeing, Blackbaud and other local science and technology organizations.”

Moreland said it was important to make the chapter larger than just the Medical University. “We have a lot of great science going on here, but MUSC is very academically rooted. There are a lot of other areas of science and other resources in Charleston to build beyond that. A lot of underrepresented minorities move to Charleston because of the opportunities in science, research and medicine here, but they don’t have a lot of connections and support, so retention is a problem. Building the chapter beyond MUSC will help to create a broader science community across the entire Charleston area.”

Moreland has heard from many representatives of local businesses and universities interested in joining the chapter and she said the local SACNAS board is working on formalizing its partnerships.

The application process, which began almost a year and a half ago, took longer than expected, Moreland said. She explained this was because the Charleston chapter of SACNAS will be the first professional chapter of the group in the United States. “About a month ago, we were finally approved,” she continued. “Only in talking with them about why the process took so long did we realize we were their first professional chapter. Up until this point, all SACNAS chapters have been exclusively tied to an academic institution. Our chapter is the first to incorporate multiple organizations and institutions located throughout a professional community. We thought we were following in the footsteps of other organizations, but we’re the first one. Because of that, they’re using us as a model program, which is both scary and neat at the same time.”

As the new chapter’s president, Moreland said she’ll present at SACNAS’s national conference in Long Beach, California, in October to discuss the process of getting the group up and running. “We recently had our first board meeting, and we just brainstormed about what we want this local chapter to look like. The really cool thing about this is, since we are the first professional chapter, we can have a lot of creativity and innovation in what we decide to do and how we decide to do it.”

One of the group’s goals, she said, is reaching out to middle and high school students to build a science pipeline. “Starting as young as possible, we want to teach everyone — and especially minority populations — what science is and what it has to offer.”

Aimee McRae-Clark, PharmD, professor of psychiatry and neurosciences and director of MUSC’s Office of Research Integrity, has been involved in SACNAS on the national level for many years.

She credits the organization’s summer leadership institute with giving her the tools and confidence to pursue a leadership position at MUSC and is excited to serve as a senior faculty advisor for the local chapter. “The establishment of a chapter in our community will be an asset for Charleston and for MUSC,” she said. “The current composition of our health care and biomedical research workforce does not reflect our nation’s changing demographics, and this is a cause for concern. Health care providers from underrepresented groups are more likely to serve underrepresented populations, be more successful in recruiting underrepresented individuals for participation in clinical research, and may be more inclined to address diseases that disproportionately affect underrepresented individuals.”

As the recently appointed diversity officer for the College of Nursing, Cristina López, Ph.D., is excited about the new chapter of SACNAS as well. “A local chapter will allow us an opportunity to streamline a lot of the service and community work we are already doing to build a pipeline of underrepresented minority scientists in our own silos, and at the same time, connect us with a larger national infrastructure to showcase what we are doing well and what we can learn from other communities around the country,” she said.

López attended a SACNAS summer leadership conference as a first–year faculty member and was impressed with the positive influence other chapters had on their universities. She explained, however, that the typical chapter, devoted to undergraduate– or graduate–level students, did not fit the needs of MUSC’s growing and diverse community.

“By establishing a professional chapter, we are also creating new avenues for underrepresented minority scientists to hold executive and national leadership positions, thus preparing them for advancement in promotion and tenure reviews. I am proud that MUSC is changing what’s possible, even beyond our own community.”

For more information on SACNAS, visit https://sacnas.org/. To get involved with the local chapter, send an email to chsSACNAS@gmail.com.