March 23, 1995
Lorena Navarro remembers how her father, a retired farm worker in the Imperial Valley where the average temperature in July reaches 107, got up at 5 a.m. each day to toil in the fields.
"He wanted more for us," she said.
His dreams may be coming true for Navarro, a graduate student in biology, thanks to a National Institute of Health Predoctoral Training Grant and the efforts of 20-year biology department veteran professor Frank Bayliss.
Thanks to two major grants Bayliss applied for, 31 graduate students are getting major funding for their graduate work and are being promised admission to Ph.D. programs, providing they keep up their academic standards.
The NIH grant, which got a three-year renewal in Sept. 1994, will provide Navarro, and each of the other 10 graduate students at SF State who qualified, $11,400 per year plus an additional $1,800 for supplies and travel per year.
SF State was also awarded a Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need Fellowship Grant by the U.S. Department of Education in the fall of l994. This grant will support 20 graduate students with $l4,696 per year for two years.
"SF State is the first non-Ph.D. granting institution to achieve this," said Bayliss, sitting behind his office desk papered with grant applications.
Bayliss, shifting from computer terminal to the ringing telephone to the students revolving through his door, said he has written five grants in the last four months and will apply for two more by the end of May. "There's good stress and bad stress -- this is good stress," said Bayliss.
Both the NIH and the GAANN grants provide for provisional admission to a Ph.D. program at UC Davis or UC San Francisco, where each student will receive guaranteed full financial support during their Ph.D. program.
"Students know they are going to get into a Ph.D. program as long as they perform as they agree to," said Bayliss, "which virtually means every student in these programs will complete a Ph.D. program."
Navarro said this is important to her. "At least you know there is one school out there you'll get into," she said.
One area of national need the grants are targeting is increasing the number of minorities and women in sciences. SF State is one of the nation's leading producers of minority bachelor's degree holders. One study ranked the university, which has the largest graduate program in biology in the California State University system, fourth in the nation in the number of minorities awarded bachelor's degrees in biology.
"A program like this, it opens the door," said Navarro, a Mexican-American woman. "You still have to prove yourself."
These are anxious times for minorities in California. Navarro said the November vote for Proposition l87 -- also known as the Save Our State initiative by supporters -- which denies public education and nonemergency health and social services to illegal immigrants did not make her feel good.
And a new Field Poll done in March, showed Californians favor by a ratio of almost 2 to l, a proposed initiative, supported by Gov. Pete Wilson, to end affirmative action in state programs.
Navarro said grant funds allowed her to attend her first scientific conference -- Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science. "I met my first minority Ph.D. immunologist. It was great. It means someday I'll make it," said Navarro.
Navarro said both Bayliss and Robert Ramirez, the professor who recruited her for the grant program, have made a difference in her life. "They think that I can make it. They believe that I can make it. That keeps me going," said Navarro, who says she keeps the grant award letter hanging on her wall for motivation.
Bayliss, calling science "an emersion experience," said he applied for the grants because "it's like the mountain that was there. We have students who are working 20 to 40 hours a week to get a degree. I did it to get support for students so they could get a degree in two years and move on with their lives. I did it because we needed it."
Navarro said for the first time in her educational career, "I don't have to work. I can devote myself full time to my studies and research."
Fifteen of the GAANN grants have been awarded, with five more to go by fall of l995 said Bayliss. SF State will reapply for the GAANN grants in three years, Bayliss said, "if the Republican Congress has not destroyed the Department of Education by then."
Former President Jimmy Carter created separate Departments of Energy and Education during his term in office which began in l976. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, Republican front-runner for the l996 presidential race, said he wanted to abolish the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development.
Navarro, who is hoping to start her Ph.D. program this fall at UC Davis, said she plans to go on to medical school after that.
Navarro said her 72-year-old father's dream is to live long enough to see her graduate from medical school.
"He can't understand DNA," said Navarro of her father, a man who only went as far as the third grade in school, "but he understands what it is to have a daughter who is a doctor."