Turning youths on to the sciences
HOLYOKE -- As Becky Wai-Ling Packard approaches the entrance to the United Congregational Church, a girl sitting on a bench calls out, ''You don't look like you belong here! Get out of here!"
The petite, neatly-dressed Mount Holyoke professor laughs, banters with the girl, and continues into the church.
''When they razz you, it is a positive thing," she said later. ''If they really felt that way, they would just look the other way rather than waste their breath."
In her dual role as youth researcher and mentor, Packard, 30, is used to being ''razzed." She frequently leaves her office on the posh Mount Holyoke campus and heads into Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, where she encourages low-income teenagers and minorities to think about careers in science and technology -- or even to consider a future at all.
''There's a focus on college-bound, college-educated people," she said. ''With all that emphasis on college, don't we even care about getting on that first road?"
Packard recently received a five-year, $440,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to help her get more youths onto that path.
She does it, in part, by meeting the students where they are -- both metaphorically, and literally, at a youth center run by the national after-school program, Girls Inc. She noticed that many of the teenagers she guides and studies were ''really into hair" care, so she talked to them about the chemistry hairdressers know -- how to use foils, dyes, and permanent chemicals.
This summer, Packard is working as a mentor and researcher at Girls Inc., encouraging a dozen girls to record their lives as ''Digital Stories" -- movies they made using PowerPoint office software.
''When you see them, you'll get it," she said before a recent dance-party to celebrate the ''digital stories." ''I love the girls."
Presented at the church, the movies were full of color, pictures, music, and narration, telling a range of stories, from harrowing tales of rape and friends' deaths to funny stories about favorite movies.
As a researcher, Packard studies ways to adapt mentor relationships for nontraditional students. She said she thinks she'll be able to have a greater impact on the teenagers, for instance, by exposing them to people from the community who have successful careers in science and technology. ''It's more powerful than having a student from Mount Holyoke tell them what college is like, because it's someone from their own neighborhood who made it," Packard said.
Her research is more than just a job: It is closely entwined with her own experience
Now an associate professor ready to apply for tenure, Packard's life could easily have taken a less-successful route.
She grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit where her half-Chinese family faced ethnic slurs and racism.
Packard's father started college but quit to serve in the Vietnam War, and he began working instead as a salesman for Campbell's Soup. Her mother, who met her father while he was in Vietnam, arrived in the United States at age 19. She worked as a key-punch operator, then at
In high school, Packard said she dreamed of becoming a technician in a ballistics lab, working on projects assigned by a scientist. Her guidance counselor suggested Packard could be the scientist. ''I just said, 'Oh no!' "
Midway through the University of Michigan, Packard discovered educational psychology -- the study of how to teach people to learn -- and began working in a program that provided early science education to girls and minorities in elementary school. A mentor encouraged her to do what seemed unthinkable -- apply to graduate school. Now, she helps others find those opportunities.
Kayla Ramos, 13, one of Packard's ''girls," said she's now imagining a future for herself, too. ''I think about using technology sometimes, or computers," she said.
It's just what Packard wants to hear, but understanding how Ramos made that decision is also essential to her research. Was the girl inspired by the ''Digital Story" she produced about a recent trip to Mexico? Or was it the example set by her uncle, who is good with computers? Or perhaps something else?
Packard will continue to search for the answer.
''What we hear a lot in Holyoke is drug involvement, gang involvement, the teen pregnancy problem," she said. ''We don't hear a lot about these potential successes."
Carolyn Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.
BECKY WAI-LING PACKARD
Age: 30
Education: Michigan State University, PhD, University of Michigan, bachelor of arts degree
Favorite summer reading: Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, Kathy Reichs
Meaning of her Chinese name, Wai-Ling: The silvery bell-like sound that emanates from her soul
