While some kids were afraid of going to the doctor, Christie Louis looked forward to each of her doctor’s appointments. From a young age, she knew she wanted to go into healthcare.
“I was really passionate about going into medicine,” Louis, MCAS ’24, said. “I feel like little kids are usually scared of doctor’s appointments … but I would quite literally like count down to my next doctor’s appointment because I was just so excited to be able to go.”
Now pursuing a degree in biology on the premedical track, Louis said the isolation that comes from navigating STEM classes as a Black student can be difficult and disappointing.
“Just being in those classes and not seeing a lot of people that look like you,” Louis said. “That can be a bit difficult and kind of disappointing because it’s just hard to not feel like you fit in completely.”
Louis said the dynamics involved in group projects are surprising and can cause her to question herself.
“I’m seeing white students not really want to work with me or turn away,” Louis said. “And I sometimes question, ‘Oh, is it the belief that I’m not smart enough to do it?’ Or, is it like, ‘I’m not capable?’”
Louis said these social dynamics are issues worth talking about.
“I think we definitely sometimes feel isolated and like we’re not necessarily welcomed or believed the same that we could do it as much as other students,” Louis said.
While initiatives like Gateway Scholars—a BC program designed for students of color in STEM—are a good start, BC can continue to provide for its minority students in STEM by creating more affinity groups on campus and expanding mentorship opportunities, Louis added.
“I also think it’d be really cool if there was some type of mentorship program where you come in as a freshman and you get partnered with someone who’s a junior, senior, who kind of has gone through it,” Louis said.
Louis said her biggest advice for students of color who plan to pursue STEM majors is to not let the expectations of others get to them and to focus energy into their work.
“I think people want you to fail sometimes, unfortunately,” Louis said. “And I think when it feels like everybody else in [your] class is against you and wanting you to fail, that’s when you should almost fight back the most and be like, ‘No, I am capable of doing it.’”
In addition to expanding academic support for students, Louis also said creating a professional network like Eagle Exchange—a mentorship program pairing current BC students with alumni—specifically tailored to AHANA students could offer examples of success to look up to.
“A freshman just needs to see that someone did it, and that they have a job, and that they’re successful, and that it’s possible,” Louis said.
According to Louis, diversifying STEM classes is necessary for students to understand and acknowledge the experiences of people with different backgrounds.
“Whether you’re working in a clinical space, like a hospital, or you’re working in labs, or you’re doing healthcare consulting—literally whatever it is—you’re gonna be encountering all walks of life,” Louis said. “So that should be reflected in the student body and in the student population that is taking those classes.”
Similar to Louis, Munachi Onyiuke, CSON ’25, also said that being a Black student in STEM at BC can feel isolating.
“You know, you look to your left or right—there’s nobody who really looks like you,” Onyiuke said. “I think that kind of hinders when people are communicating or in class, when you’re asking questions to your peers [like], ‘Oh, did you get that note?’”
Onyiuke is a member of the Gateway program, which she said enabled her to form strong connections with her peers and develop personal relationships with her professors.
“Relationship building with your STEM professors and being able to meet them—even if you don’t have a class with them because all of them teach upper level classes—has been such a great experience,” Onyiuke said.
Onyiuke is also a member of the Schiller Institute Student Board, which she said was created with the purpose of aligning the Schiller Institute’s values with the diverse composition of the student body.
“I was actually on the first wave of Student Board members when it first became a student board, and it is a group of about 12 of us,” Onyiuke said. “Our role initially was to kind of make what would be the precedent for the entire rest of its livelihood in the future.”
According to Onyiuke, the board was designed to promote representation of the diverse array of student backgrounds.
“Another component we’re trying to focus on is trying to be fair and truly trying to represent what the Boston College student population looked like, and kind of amplify every person’s voice,” Onyiuke said.
While there is not a specific diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) component to the student board, the board’s core mission is dedicated to creating an inclusive environment, Onyiuke said.
“While we don’t have a specific DEI initiative or DEI focus on the side, everything we do is geared towards making sure that the [student board] is promoting diverse initiatives,” Onyiuke said.
Onyiuke said it is important for BC to make consistent progress toward equity for Black students on campus.
“This whole topic about being Black in America, we have to understand that it’s not just about equality, it’s about equity too,” Onyiuke said. “And because Black students are historically the most disadvantaged students—socioeconomically, specifically—it’s also about what kind of equitable things can we put in place to support Black students?”
There also exists a stigma, Onyiuke said, around Black students’ socioeconomic status.
“At BC, I think there might be this kind of stigma that every Black person you see probably came from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background,” Onyiuke said. “And that is also not the case in a lot of situations too. So it’s also about balancing that tightrope.”
Oluchi Ota, another member of the Schiller student board, said normalizing Black experiences in STEM fields through outreach and recognition is one of the biggest ways BC can support students of color.
“But also the recognition of just like Black normalcy … not necessarily feeling like they have to go to like extraneous feats just to feel equal or recognized or honored in the same way as people that are doing maybe less than them,” Ota, CSON ’24, said.
Another way to open doors for BC’s students of color is to better publicize opportunities and encourage students to apply, Ota said.
“I think that a lot of the times, I’ve often strayed from applying to things because it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s probably so hard,’” Ota said.
Like Louis and Onyiuke, Ota also said that being one of the only students of color in her STEM classes is a challenge.
“It’s tough to always be the first person—the first Black person—into a certain room that has any level of closed doors,” Ota said.
Ota said that looking at communities of color and understanding what they need can directly lead to successful innovation in scientific fields.
“[Black students] all come from such different backgrounds and have such different perspectives and stories and views on things,” Ota said. “I’m glad that I have them as people that I know because it constantly reminds me that being Black isn’t a monolith, and our experiences aren’t all the same, and we don’t come from like the same background.”
Ismael Ben Fofana, assistant professor of biology, said his deeply-held passion for science has always been closely linked with a desire to help other people.
“I’m not just interested in science for being a scientist, but how could you resolve some of the problems that people are facing—particularly in developing countries,” he said.
Fofana, who grew up in Côte d’Ivoire, initially studied crop science in hopes of devising a solution to the famines that plagued farmers across West Africa.
“I was aware of famine in some places in Africa,” Fofana said. “What I was thinking when I got into grad school was engineering plants for farmers so that they can save their crop and don’t lose too much.”
Fofana said he had always known about HIV on some level, but when he talked to graduate school colleagues who were performing HIV research, he opened his eyes to the importance of the field and shifted his focus to HIV vaccine development.
“It’s my meeting with these people that I realized that HIV was such a big deal, and that’s how I switched my mind and thought about working on HIV,” Fofana said.
While performing research in Japan, Fofana met Welkin Johnson, then a professor at Harvard Medical School.
When Johnson became chair of BC’s biology department, he invited Fofana to follow him—a role that Fofana said was markedly different from his previous positions.
“Yes, there were challenges, but for me, it was worth it,” Fofana said. “I would see the challenges as motivation to do what I really wanted to do. I felt like, ‘Okay, I have the opportunity to do what I was dreaming of doing,’ so I was just enjoying the moment.”
According to Fofana, BC has made significant strides during the last decade in diversity efforts—both in terms of outreach and retention—for students and faculty alike.
“I can see how the [student] population is more diverse,” Fofana said. “Even with faculty … you have more women professors, you have more underrepresented minority professors, so this is good for all of us—a lot of progress.”
Fofana said he hopes to expand and increase the funding of initiatives targeting students from underrepresented backgrounds to allow more access to opportunities
“I know we have programs like SACNAS and Gateway Scholars to try to help students to achieve, but we want to see more of that and, more importantly, give them maybe more scholarships for a summer internship and things like that,” Fofana said.
But while mentorship opportunities and programs are important, students should be allowed to take initiative and forge their own paths—especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, Fofana said.
“You want to let [students] find their own way,” Fofana said. “So it’s not just providing, providing, providing, and then they don’t know how to achieve things by themselves. Finding the right balance is always a challenge, but we’re enjoying doing it.”
Fofana said that mentoring students is one of the most gratifying parts of being a professor.
“That’s the fun part of it—getting that email from students, ‘Oh, I got in here,’ Fofana said. “‘Last week, I got into dental school.’ You get emails like that [from students], and that’s priceless.”
According to BC mathematics professor Caleb Ashley, the field of mathematics heavily relies on community.
“As passionate as I am about my research, my teaching, [and] my mentorship, the mathematics community is something that I belong to,” Ashley said.
Ashley is a National Science Foundation Ascend Fellow, which he said is a government-funded initiative aiming to diversify the professorial. Even in the field of mathematics, biases are common, he said.
“There’s a logical nature to mathematics, but extrinsic bias operates definitely in the field, and how it’s carried out, and one can see it,” Ashley said. “There are choices. We can act like we don’t see it, we can deny we see it, or we can confront it.”
Ashley has an anti-racism statement on his professional website, in which he describes the DEI work built into his research.
“It would be easier not to have it,” Ashley said. “But I think it’s there because even if it’s uncomfortable, the need to have these conversations is greater than the alternative of not. Even though it’s easier to not put it there, to not have conversation, that alternative is not acceptable.”
According to Ashley, an effective way to combat inequalities in academia is to take preventative measures rather than reactionary.
“One way to respond to things is you kind of wait for some event to happen and then you kind of clutch at your pearls and have some reaction,” Ashley said. “We don’t like this and we deplore that’—that’s kind of reactionary, so that’s one way to respond to these things. Another way to respond is to have ongoing conversations.”
Ashley said BC is making progress toward increasing conversation about diversity in its departments and among the student body.
“This is an issue that the University as a whole is dealing with,” Ashley said. “I think it’s important to share and to be able to engage in these kinds of conversations.”
