PhD students on the medical campus honor a champion of diversity at Harvard

A gathering to honor the legacy of a pioneering Harvard figure was held at Longwood on April 12, sponsored by the Minority Biomedical Scientists of Harvard (MBSH), a PhD group dedicated to advancing opportunity and support for minority researchers. The Inaugural Jocelyn Spragg Lecture was billed as celebration of diversity in the biomedical sciences — a fitting way to remember the influence and the achievements of its namesake.

Few people at Harvard did more to encourage and promote diversity in the sciences than Jocelyn Spragg, PhD ’69, who died in 2010. And few demonstrated her leadership and commitment to developing programs that support and mentor minority students. She served first as faculty coordinator (1991–1998) and then as faculty director (1998-2010) of diversity programs and special academic resources in the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard Medical School, where she developed one of the premier summer research programs in the country, the Summer Honors Undergraduate Research Program (SHURP) and created the MBSH group.

The event held in her memory, funded by the Division of Medical Sciences and the GSAS Graduate Student Council, featured a talk by Gentry Patrick, PhD ’00, associate professor of biology at the University of California San Diego. Later in the day, MBSH presented a career panel for students, followed by a reception. Panelists were Dodzie Sogah, associate director of business development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, PhD ’08; Josef Kurtz, chair and associate professor of biology at Emmanuel College, PhD ’02, Gentry Patrick, Patrick; and Rafael Luna, research fellow in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS and founder of Luna Scientific.