Through Pathways to STEM Careers program, UHCL student to begin doctoral program

February 11, 2019

Jazmine Jayasi began her academic career envisioning herself as a medical doctor. She is receiving her Bachelor of Science in Biological Science from University of Houston-Clear Lake this month, but her involvement in the Pathways to STEM Careers program changed her career focus.

“I applied to the Pathways to STEM Careers program in 2017 and got hired as a peer mentor in spring 2018,” Jayasi said. “I got paid to do the peer mentoring, and then I moved into getting a research assistantship with (Assistant Professor of Microbiology) Michael LaMontagne.”

The Pathways to STEM Careers is a grant-funded program that enables UH-Clear Lake to develop support services and strategies to increase student success among Hispanic and other low-income students in STEM fields. UHCL received more than $3.7 million for the program to be distributed between 2016-2021.
Because she wanted to expand her knowledge of science, Jayasi said, she expressed a desire to spend her gap year doing research in a lab. 

"When you’re on a medical school track, what you do during your gap year goes on your application,” she said. “This is a time you’re expected to work, do a master’s, or something else to make you a better applicant for medical school. I was looking at University of Texas Medical Branch to start my master’s in clinical lab sciences or the pathologist’s assistant program.”

But her current research assistantship in LaMontagne’s lab, coupled with a medical mission trip she’d taken last June to Peru, combined to create a different scenario for Jayasi.

“While I was on that mission trip, I met physicians and dentists who gave free medical and dental care to people in three cities to which we traveled while we were there,” she said. “Some of those doctors knew a professor who was looking for students majoring in biology to enroll in a biomedical engineering doctoral program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.”

The professor offered to mentor Jayasi and she was accepted into the program. “Most of the other students have a master’s degree, they’ve been published and they have more research and lab experience than I do,” she said. “What got me there was the mission trip and Pathways to STEM Careers. When they saw those things on my resume, that’s what got me a place in this doctoral program.”

Jayasi said she will walk across the stage on Dec. 15 to collect her diploma, then she will begin the drive to Carbondale the next day. “I’ll get my Ph.D. in about seven years, the same amount of time it would have taken me to get through medical school and residency,” she said. “There is a lot of money invested in research, so I would advise students to consider doctoral programs.”

She found that doctoral programs were not just looking for academically brilliant people. “They need people who have volunteered, who have experience with mentoring and with leadership, and have good communications skills,” she said. “It’s not common to go to a doctoral program without a master’s degree, but thanks to Pathways to STEM Careers, I have all these things.”

She added, “I’m so glad I’ll be in this program. I’ll be receiving a stipend and I’ve found someone who will mentor me. My aspiration is to design equipment to help pathologists have a better way to discover the causes of diseases than just microscopes. I want to help them diagnose with more precision.”