NOBCChE Inspires Young Scientists

"It's good to be home," said Joseph S. Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society, as he helped kick off the 37th annual meeting of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) in Atlanta. For Francisco, who is a past-president of NOBCChE (pronounced No-buh-shay), that declaration is rooted in a rich history.

A tight-knit community of scientists and engineers of color, NOBCChE exists primarily to help its members—especially the young ones—achieve success in their careers. And Francisco has been part of the family for quite some time. "I could not have made it to my position as president of ACS without all your help," he told an audience of NOBCChE members during his keynote address.Francisco, the second African American to attain the ACS presidency, is also a professor of physical chemistry at Purdue University. He was at this year's NOBCChE meeting, which ran from March 29 to April 2, to give a kick-off lecture in honor of the first ACS president of color, Henry A. Hill. "It's important to know our history," Francisco said during the Hill Award Lecture, which is sponsored by the ACS Northeastern Section. Hill was "truly a pioneer" with "an entrepreneurial spirit," he added.

Although the theme of this year's NOBCChE meeting was "Sustainability," the message that Francisco delivered—one of encouragement to attendees to find professional inspiration in pioneers and role models such as Hill—was a thread that connected the conference's many programs. More than 700 registrants participated in the meeting, which included teaching and career workshops, technical sessions, a scientific-exchange poster session, a career expo, and a science bowl and fair for middle and high school students.

One particularly inspirational event was the Percy L. Julian Award Lecture, delivered this year by Thomas O. Mensah, founder of Atlanta-based Georgia Aerospace Systems Manufacturing. This award, NOBCChE's most prestigious honor, is given each year in memory of Julian, the world's first African American to lead a research group at a major corporation. Embodying a similar pioneering spirit, Mensah was recognized for his seminal contributions to fiber-optic technology and the telecommunications industry.

While working at Corning Glass Works, in New York, during the mid-1980s, Mensah devised a method for rapidly manufacturing high-quality fiber optics—a glass drawing and coating process that earned him four patents. His innovations have enabled the production of robust, homogenous fibers through which light can be transmitted efficiently.

Mensah's work was so admired that he was hired away from Corning in the late 1980s by AT&T Bell Laboratories. Once at Bell Labs, he continued to innovate, developing fiber-optic reels for guided missile systems and earning more patents. Today, he is the president of Georgia Aerospace, an advanced materials firm that makes products for commercial and military aircraft, as well as for homeland security.

"You can do something to help your country," Mensah pointed out to the audience, going on to say that chemists, in particular, should move into the field of green technology. An early proponent of high-speed rail, Mensah recently established Green Transportation Systems, a Florida-based subsidiary of Georgia Aerospace. The new clean-technology firm is working on fabricating nanomaterials for use in windmill turbines, smart-grid sensors, electric vehicles, and high-speed transit systems. "We can revive our construction industry" in the U.S. with endeavors such as these, Mensah said.

At a luncheon following the lecture, NOBCChE Executive Board Chair Bobby L. Wilson said he was moved by Mensah's entrepreneurial spirit, adding, "It gave me a greater appreciation for the people we're giving awards to." Despite being an established professor of chemistry at Texas Southern University, Wilson added, "It even made me want to go out and start my own business."

Another moving event at the NOBCChE meeting that paid tribute to role models and pioneers was the Winifred Burks-Houck Women's Professional Leadership Symposium. This was the first year for this session, which was established because "we needed something that honors the female heritage of this organization," said Talitha L. Hampton, a symposium co-organizer and a development engineer at Merck & Co. Not only was Burks-Houck the first female national president of NOBCChE, but she was also the longest running president, holding office for 10 years.

Margaret E. M. Tolbert, senior adviser in the Office of Integrative Activities at the National Science Foundation, was the highlighted speaker at the symposium. She recognized Burks-Houck's contributions to NOBCChE and spotlighted the accomplishments of a number of other black females in science, including Marie Daly, the first female of color to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry.

She also gave some encouragement to the female scientists in the audience. "Be patient—but only to an extent," Tolbert advised. To attain the positions they seek, women need to be more direct, she contended. "You can have all the best ideas in the world, but if you don't act on them, it doesn't matter," she said.

The symposium ended with a presentation of three new leadership awards. The undergraduate award went to Kari L. Copeland of the University of Mississippi, the graduate award was given to Shannon P. Anderson of Florida State University, and the professional award was accepted by Sandra K. Parker of Dow Chemical, who is the 2010 national conference cochair for NOBCChE.

A surprise honor—the NOBCChE President's Award—was bestowed upon another woman in chemistry at a gala held at the close of the meeting. The award recognized Madeleine Jacobs, executive director and chief executive officer of ACS, who attended the meeting as a judge for the science fair this year, for her support of NOBCChE over the past several years. Jacobs said that she was "blown away" by President Victor R. McCrary's announcement. "I am really honored to receive this recognition from NOBCChE, as it is an organization that I have admired and been involved with since I came to ACS," she said.

During the meeting, at a state-of-the-organization breakfast, McCrary, who is also the business area executive for science and technology at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, announced a recent initiative that could bring NOBCChE, both physically and structurally, even closer to ACS. Established in September 2009, NOBCChE's National Office Initiative aims to move the organization away from being event-driven to being program-driven. The first step on this path is to create a national headquarters in Washington, D.C., which is also home to ACS.

"We are now making a transition and moving to the next level," McCrary told C&EN. This business plan would generate paid positions for an executive director, as well as for program and finance directors, marketing specialists, and administrative staff. NOBCChE will move away from being just an annual meeting and "become a 24/7 part of everybody's life," McCrary said.

One program already launched by NOBCChE is its Technology Education Partnerships (TEP) program, which links majority educational institutions with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to catalyze research collaborations. TEP also aims to help enable the transition of students from minority undergraduate institutions to majority graduate institutions, encouraging a greater number of people of color to pursue graduate degrees, McCrary said.

NOBCChE is also working to make its annual meeting science bowl competition a series of year-round events. Competitions would be held both at the spring national meeting and at similar meetings in the organization's five regions during the fall, McCrary said, because "at the region is where the rubber meets the road." Working with middle and high school students more often and providing them with ever-present role models is a way to get them thinking about seeking a career in science and engineering. "If you wait for a student in his or her junior or senior year of high school to be attracted toward any of the sciences, it's just too late," he told C&EN.

McCrary is proof that a young scientist's career can benefit from role models. "My affiliation with NOBCChE actually started with my thesis professor," he said. William M. Jackson, one of the seven founders of the organization and then a chemistry professor at Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C., encouraged McCrary and fellow students to attend NOBCChE meetings. Some 30 years later, McCrary is now head of the NOBCChE family, after having worked at Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff and at the National Institute of Standards & Technology as the second-ever black technical division chief.

NOBCChE is one of two communities that have had a formative influence on his life. "ACS provides me with my professional identity," McCrary said. "NOBCChE provides me with my psychological identity. And both are extremely important."

The next NOBCChE national meeting will be held on April 19–22, 2011, in Houston.