MENTOR
JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Guiding Research Via Innovative PRISM By Barbara Fischkin
M
ARCEL Roberts entered John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 1998 as a freshman already convinced that research and doctoral degrees were “only for smart people and not on my radar screen.” Today Roberts has a Ph.D. in chemistry, a body of work with implications for national security, health and the environment — and a new position as an assistant professor at John Jay. How did this happen? During his first year, Roberts was mentored by then assistant professor Anthony Carpi. “He taught me how to do research,” the younger professor says. “He taught me how to write papers. He taught me how to get into a Ph.D. program.” Back then Carpi — now a full professor in the Department of Sciences — along with some of his colleagues envisioned a much broader faculty-advised undergraduate research program. Today the college has one. PRISM (Program for Research Initiatives for Science Majors) began in 2006 and as a result three or four students a year move on to graduate or medical school, ten times the number as in the 1990s. “I wanted students to learn not just what science is but what it does,” Carpi says. “In the classroom they learned about atomic and evolutionary theory — and about the organic chemicals they needed to know for the semester. But we didn’t focus on process.” Now his students also have ample laboratory space, a luxury that did not exist in years past. For his efforts, Carpi, one of PRISM’s two co-directors, received John Jay’s 2009 Distinguished Service to Students Award. And this year Jason Quinones (’10), a student mentored by Carpi, was accepted into the Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology doctoral program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Like both Roberts and Carpi, Quinones did not have parents who considered graduate school an option for themselves. His mother had earned some college
Anthony Carpi, left, has mentored Marcel Roberts, right, now an assistant professor, and student Amora Mayo-Perez.
credits and his father left school in the “pretty typical middle-class family.” Her ninth grade. Quinones says his undergradumother and sister both have graduate ate research made him competitive and degrees and she hopes to gain acceptance “was the best choice I could have made.” to a doctoral program in biological sciences. PRISM, subsidized by federal, state and Yet she says the opportunity to do research nonprofit sources, grew from an earlier changed her outlook, too. “I thought there state-funded program. About 50 students a was a right answer in class and in lab.… year participate, up Conducting research has made it clear from 13 when it About 50 students a year that nothing goes as planned. It has began. (Only four helped me to become more of a participate in PRISM up thoughtful problem solver.” students did undergraduate Carpi, an environmental toxicologist from 13 when it began. research in 2000.) who studies mercury emissions from Professor Lawrence soil — work that might help us to Kobilinsky is the program’s other counderstand the effects that climate change director and professor Ron Pilette teams up will have on the toxicity of the metal — students and faculty members and helps involves his students in his research in both students obtain funding. intricate and basic ways. “He brings in large This initiative is especially important at bags of soil from his backyard in Connecticut John Jay, which has a very diverse student for us to test,” says Anthony Ho (’09). Ho body and many first generation college stunow works as Carpi’s lab assistant and dents. It also has more Hispanic students teaches freshman chemistry. His parents than any college in the Northeast. Almost have bachelor’s and associate degrees, and he half the college’s students come from famiis contemplating medical school or a lies who do not speak English at home. program in which he will study how foreign Sometimes, though, even students substances affect gene regulation. whose parents have advanced degrees need Students such as Ho, Mayo-Perez and support to understand the nuances of Quinones are the latest links in a mentoring research and find the courage — and the chain that began in the years when Carpi funding — to undertake it. helped freshman Marcel Roberts. Of his own New York City-born senior Amora students Roberts now says, “some of them reMayo-Perez comes from a well-educated mind me of me when I was younger.”
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