I’m in the third year of the PhD program in Cell and Molecular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine. My project is titled “developmentally regulated alternative splicing in muscle”. My thesis advisor is Dr. Thomas Cooper. I expect to be working towards graduation for an additional two years. I’ve published a small preview in Developmental Cell (Bland CS, Cooper TA. “Micromanaging alternative splicing during muscle differentiation” Dev Cell. 2007 Feb;12(2):171-2.Click here to read) and have presented poster at the 2007 RNA society meeting in Madison Wisconsin and the 2007 Eukaryotic mRNA Processing Meeting at Cold Springs Harbor NY. I’m currently working on my first major publication, that is tentatively intended for submission to PNAS. I won an award for the best qualifying exam (The Claude W. Smith Fellowship Award) and won third place for best poster at my departmental retreat. In addition to my thesis work, I’ve also volunteered to tutor other graduate students and to TA two classes (genetics B and Gene regulation), I’ve thought two mini courses over the summer for incoming students and I was elected student representative for my departments Steering committee. I was also awarded the BRASS fellowship, a fairly prestigious award given to 2-3 students per year. The award entails a $1000 prize and a yearly $2000 research grant, renewed yearly until graduation. My stipend has been primarily supported by a pre-doctorial fellowship for minority students through the Ford Foundation and the National Academies of Science 

Impact of RISE,

The RISE program has had an enormous impact on every area of my scholastic and professional life. The financial support I received through RISE gave me the freedom to work in the lab instead of taking on an unrelated second job to support myself throughout college. Additionally, almost everything I learned about graduate school came through the RISE program. The information and support I received was invaluable throughout every stage of my maturation as a student and a scientist and allowed me to make informed decisions. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to serve on a steering committee here at Baylor, I’ve seen how many students from highly prestigious universities (Harvard, Hopkins, Stanford, Yale) are poorly informed about graduate school and ill prepared to enter a serous research environment. This really makes me appreciate how will prepared I was through the RISE program. Additionally, I’m sure that my many poster presentation and speaking awards that I had the opportunity to earn through attending national meeting with the RISE program was instrumental in my acceptance to so many fantastic graduate programs and my fellowship award through the Ford Foundation. I’ve learned that the talent pool for young scientist is getting more and more competitive, and that simply having strong grades is not enough anymore. I’ve come to understand that programs like RISE are absolutely essential for under-represented students to gain a competitive edge. Thanks to the research and mentoring I received, I’ve been able to assemble a strong CV much earlier in my career then most of my peers, I’m sure this will continue to help me advance in science for many years to come.  Overall, I cannot imagine receiving better training as a scientist from any other program, the RISE program was a wonderful opportunity that has helped to change my life and the lives of many other burgeoning scientists for the better

 Chris Bland presents one of his award winning posters at the 2004 ABRCMS Dallas, TX