HBCU Engagement Initiative

Forming Faculty to Faculty Collaborations

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is the medical school for a nine-hospital health system, The Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care system in New York State. We also have a Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (MD/PhD, PhD, MPH, Masters of Biomedical Sciences, and PhD Neuroscience), which positions us as a research-intensive institution producing physician-scientists and biomedical scientists. We have entered into other partnerships to enable translational research and clinical discoveries (Engineering, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, etc.), through Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) agreements with several New York institutions (e.g., Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Cooper Union (Engineering), City University of New York (CUNY), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

Despite these partnerships and past outreach efforts, we have struggled to recruit underrepresented students, post-docs, and faculty into our basic sciences. These challenges are not unique to just one organization or institution; therefore, the HBCU Engagement Initiative is committed to eliminating these gaps in representation.

Our approach through the initiative is to develop faculty-to-faculty relationships since the notion is more sustainable than the traditional student recruitments. Naturally, this will result in the flow of students, post-docs, and faculty between all initiative entities; however, that is not the immediate goal. The initiative expects all entities to collaborative grants, shared mentoring of graduate students, post-docs, and faculty, and research (e.g., diabetes, sickle cell disease, human genetics, and wellness). The potential of this initiative is limitless, and the more organizations and institutions that join make this even more conceivable.

If you are interested in joining our HBCU Engagement Initiative, please email Gladys Wells and Anthony Smalls and express your interest in joining. They will schedule a meeting with you and add you to our monthly meetings. Remember that change only occurs when intentions are followed up with proactive actions. We look forward to joining soon!

HBCU Engagement Initiative Consortium:

• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System (ISMMS)
  • Reginald Miller, DVM, DACLAM
  • Evren Azeloglu, PhD
  • Bruce Gelb, MD
  • Hala Harony-Nicolas, PhD
  • Eimear Kenny, PhD
  • Paul Kenny, PhD
  • Sarah Millar, PhD
  • Eric Nestler, MD, PhD
  • Matthew O’Connell, PhD
  • Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD
  • Andrew Stewart, MD
  • Emanuela Taioli, MD, PhD

• Hampton University
  
  • Jerald Dumas, PhD 
  • Simone Heyliger, PhD

• Howard University College of Medicine (HUCM)
  • Celia Maxwell, MD
  • Karl Thompson, PhD

• Meharry Medical College (MMC)
  • Anil Shanker, PhD
  • Evangeline Motley-Johnson, PhD

• Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM)
  • Erica Sutton, MD
  • Rahmelle Thompson, DVM
  • James Lillard, PhD, MBA

• Spelman College
  • Rosalind Gregory-Bass, MD

• Tuskegee University
  • Clayton Yates, PhD

• Xavier University of Louisiana
  • Kelly Johanson, PhD

• Brooklyn College
  • Louise Hainline, PhD

• The CUNY School of Medicine (CSOM)
  • Maria Lima, PhD