Bianca Kerr, 20, wasn’t immediately interested in the medical field. Actually, she really liked reading and writing, but was encouraged by her teachers to try more approachable research projects in science.
“I started getting a little bit more into biotechnology like in my senior year of high school. And then I was like, wait, actually, I love the practical application of science and medicine is awesome,” Kerr said.
She said she started looking into different types of medicine like osteopathy.
“It's more holistic. It's more like taking care of the mind, the body and the soul and seeing the patient as a whole, which was really interesting to me,” Kerr said.
Kerr was recently awarded a scholarship from the Slater-Millner Scholars Fund from UNCF formerly the United Negro College Fund. It’s aimed at providing financial assistance to students who are on a pre-med track with an interest in helping underserved communities. Since the program opened in 2022-2023, 86 students have received the scholarship, 8 of which live in Massachusetts, according to UNCF.
“Of course, the scholarship is targeted for people of color and minorities getting access to higher education and medicine. But it was also surprising that they saw potential in me. I felt really honored,” Kerr said.
Kerr is a first generation college student from Springfield coming from a single-parent household. She’s worked with her mentor, assistant professor of biochemistry, Pamela Cote, at Elms College on various lab projects.
Cote said a lot of the opportunities she was given started from programs geared towards supporting people of color.
“My dad was in the military, you know, working class. I probably wouldn’t have made it through those programs without that support. I was a part of the society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans and Sciences. I'd get grants to go present at those conferences as a grad student," she said. "I had a National Institute of Health [NIH] grant that supported me as being a diverse person of color in the STEM sciences, along with like a dozen or so other students in my same school that were in other labs. So, I mean, it's really sad to see now that we're losing that."
Cote said she knows students who are currently in grad school that can’t continue their work because federal funding was pulled from their research.
NPR reported universities across the U.S. lost about $11 billion dollars total in research funding.
Cote said funding for STEM programs are critical, since it lends to important understandings of how the body works, new treatments for diseases, and ways to improve medical care.
She credited various chairs at Elms who are applying for grants to support students in underrepresented STEM fields.
“We have a plethora of people in this Western mass area that are excited about STEM fields that want to go into STEM fields, but they don't know how to get there. So these are avenues that kind of open those doors where for others maybe they already have that way into that particular field,” Cote said. “These things are critical and especially if we want to keep up with the world and what everybody else is doing to improve our access to health care, drugs, just basic human rights.”
Kerr said she was concerned about finding people she could identify with in a predominantly white area.
“I was worried about coming into college like would there be anyone to support me? Would I see anybody like me interested in what I'm doing? The answer is yes. Absolutely, ” Kerr said. “There are students who are just like me. They want to go into medicine, they want to go into STEM . They want to go into the arts and literature. And then we have lovely women of color professors who are supporting us and see potential in us. So yeah, there was a worry, but like not so much anymore.”
Kerr said she wants to inspire people like her to listen to that gnawing feeling inside, pulling them towards something they deeply desire.
“If you even have the slightest idea in the back of your head that you might be able to do something even if it's just like a little whisper and you're like, no, no, I could never. Like actually try it, just try it, you never know what might happen,” Kerr said.
