Dr. Rita Colwell Lunches with Grad Students
Photo by Kevin Decker
Montgomery Fellow Dr. Rita Colwell speaks with graduate student Brad Bate.
Cholera and Avian flu might not be typical lunchtime conversations. But to Dartmouth Graduate and Professional students, these subjects dominated an hour-long lunch with one of the leading public health scholars and policy advisors in the nation, Montgomery Fellow Dr. Rita Colwell. On October 11, 2005, public health expert and former director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Dr. Rita Colwell met informally with graduate students from the Arts and Sciences and Dartmouth Medical School.
Over a lunch of salad and sandwiches, Rita Colwell discussed the public health threats of Cholera and Avian Influenza and encouraged Dartmouth Grads to get involved in public heath issues both at home and abroad. Students listened intently as the soft-spoken Dr. Colwell told anecdotes relating to her years of fieldwork and were charged by the inspirational career she has had in both science and public policy.
As a Montgomery Fellow, Dr. Colwell spent the week in Hanover giving talks about her extensive career in public heath highlighting her groundbreaking research in the nature of cholera epidemics in Bangladesh. “I like coming to Dartmouth because it is a college in transition from a small college to an international institution. It has the advantages of being a full university in the environment of a small school,” noted Dr. Colwell whose daughter is a recent graduate of DMS and in private practice in Vermont.
Dr. Colwell detailed her research with vibreocholera. Her discoveries led to a different understanding of the pathogen as it related to patterns of marine plankton. She had many difficulties treating people in countries where public heath standards are much poorer than in the United States. “Treating cholera is a humbling experience. We would have seven-hundred victims a day coming into the hospital with cholera,” she said of her field experience in Bangladesh, where often a partial cement structure with a tarp top often functioned as a hospital ward.
Dr. Colwell's work with cholera lead to her involvement for six years with the National Science Board and later as a Presidential appointee as the Director of NSF. Asked about her experience working in the public realm, “I enjoyed working with The Hill. I learned to deal with senators and legislators.” She was interested in the policy side of medicine because it gave her a greater voice for the stability and security of the nation. Students questioned her on current problems with international epidemics, specifically about the threat of avian flu. When asked she warned, “If it hits this year we are in trouble.”
Better science education will lead to better developments for humanity, and better ways to confront and combat disease. Dr. Colwell encouraged more funding for science education and stressed that the gravest danger facing Americans outside of a terrorist attack, was for American research science to lose its preeminence. “Our entire standard of living comes from science and engineering - yet people remain largely ignorant because the quality of science education nationwide is pretty poor.”
Dr. Colwell was brought to Dartmouth through the Montgomery Fellows Program. Established in 1977 through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Montgomery 25' to “provide for the advancement of the academic realm of the college”, the Montgomery Fellows sponsor major international figures in both the academic and nonacademic communities.
~Ian Isherwood
