How I Became a Scientist: From Ranch to Research

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00:00:08.14 Robert Ramirez - "How I Became a Scientist"
00:00:15.10 I'm very pleased to be invited to this forum
00:00:19.13 to talk about my experience on becoming a scientist and an educator.
00:00:23.27 My name is Robert Ramirez, and I'm a professor of microbiology at San Francisco State University.
00:00:29.28 So, what are the lessons that I learned and that I hope to share in this presentation?
00:00:35.26 I hope to remind you that with persistence and motivation,
00:00:40.27 a career in science and education is open to anyone.
00:00:44.27 But, success also depends on possessing a variety of skills.
00:00:50.23 First of all, you should study each challenge very carefullyâ€”
00:00:55.29 you should get as much information as possible.
00:00:58.14 You should make very critical decisions. You should develop a good gut instinct.
00:01:05.01 And you should be independent.
00:01:07.00 And not surprisingly, many of these skills are necessary to practice good science.
00:01:12.21 I was born in a small agricultural town in northern California.
00:01:17.12 I had a very happy childhood of running in the fields and climbing the trees behind my house.
00:01:23.14 My mom was a homemaker. She was born here in the United States
00:01:28.13 and graduated from high school. My father, on the other hand, was a Mexican national
00:01:34.03 He was also illiterate. He could not read or write in Spanish or in English.
00:01:41.15 Consequently, my father had to take jobs working in the fields.
00:01:48.06 This resulted in a very low income in our household,
00:01:52.26 and we wereâ€”for lack of a better wordâ€”very poor.
00:01:57.19 In addition, there was no tradition of education in my family.
00:02:04.08 This wasn't because of any negative association with education,
00:02:08.27 it was just simply because my parents didn't know anything about it.
00:02:12.27 For economic reasons, my father decided to move my family to Mexico,
00:02:17.28 where he could secure a better living.
00:02:20.18 The town that he moved us to was a very small, rural town that lacked many services,
00:02:27.07 including a high school. So, at the age of 14, my education came to a stop.
00:02:35.10 For four years, I worked on the family ranch, and finally I decided this isn't very good,
00:02:43.01 and I decided to return to the United States.
00:02:46.17 Once here in the United States, I got my GED diploma
00:02:50.02 and I started attending a community college.
00:02:53.04 I started to take every course that I could find that had the word basic in itâ€”
00:03:00.14 basic mathematics, basic English, basic chemistry.
00:03:06.02 Eventually, after four years of study, my advisor told me
00:03:09.26 that it was time for me to transfer to a four-year university
00:03:13.28 to get a bachelor's degree,
00:03:15.25 and I was, quite honestly, surprised that I was even allowed to do that.
00:03:20.26 I transferred to the University of California at Riverside,
00:03:25.25 and those were the two happiest years of my life.
00:03:29.05 I met people who became lifelong friends, and I took a variety of different courses...
00:03:36.19 I took Shakespeare and art history,
00:03:38.11 as well as physical chemistry and human embryology.
00:03:41.23 It was everything that Ruth Simmons, the President of Brown University,
00:03:46.18 said a university should be.
00:03:48.21 She said that a university should provide a profession, it should provide a philosophy of life,
00:03:55.03 it should provide independence, and it should provide an awareness of the world.
00:03:59.16 And the education that I got at UC Riverside did all of these things for me.
00:04:06.22 After I graduated, one of my professors offered me a job in her lab,
00:04:11.20 and I did research for four years. It was there that I learned the precision of science.
00:04:18.11 Afterwards, I then attended the University of California, Davis,
00:04:23.11 where I pursued my doctoral degree in microbiology.
00:04:27.00 I then did my post-doctoral research at the University of California in San Francisco
00:04:32.06 and at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
00:04:35.04 During my professional development,
00:04:38.11 I was fortunate to have met several excellent mentors.
00:04:42.27 The first was Dr. Katherine Atkinson at the University of California, Riverside.
00:04:47.01 The second was Dr. Merna Villarejo at the University of California, Davis.
00:04:52.04 And lastly Dr. Michael Esposito at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
00:04:57.15 In 1993, I was hired to teach at San Francisco State University.
00:05:02.08 Eventually, I received tenure and I was promoted to full professor.
00:05:06.21 At San Francisco State University, I teach various
00:05:10.04 senior level courses in microbiology and in virology.
00:05:14.13 I also do research and I use yeast to study stress responses and lipid metabolism.
00:05:21.16 At San Francisco State University, I work with a wonderful, diverse set of colleagues.
00:05:27.21 Of the forty professors in the biology department,
00:05:30.21 8 are underrepresented minorities, and 5 are gay or lesbian.
00:05:36.22 Our country and our world need an educated, diverse, and well-informed society.
00:05:43.19 But we also face many challenges.
00:05:46.16 Right now, we are in the midst of a severe economic crisis
00:05:51.11 that makes the pursuit of an education much more difficult.
00:05:54.06 But we also find ourselves in a society that is
00:05:59.00 increasingly intolerant of minorities and people of color.
00:06:02.07 I find this especially upsetting because I am a minority, and I'm gay.
00:06:07.27 If these negative influences are allowed to escalate,
00:06:12.24 we will find ourselves without people like Ruth Simmons,
00:06:16.03 the first African American woman president of an Ivy League University,
00:06:21.18 without Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a noted neurosurgeon,
00:06:27.01 or without people like Luis Villarreal, an eminent virologist.
00:06:31.29 We need to recognize that we need
00:06:34.06 to involve all members of our society for our common good.
00:06:38.09 We need to recognize the unique gift that each one of us possess.
00:06:44.03 Thank you.
00:06:50.13 See more at ibiomagazine.org.
00:06:53.05 See scientific lectures at ibioseminars.org.

This Talk

Speaker: Robert Ramirez

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: December 2012

Talk Overview

When Ramirez was a child, his family moved from northern California to a ranch in rural Mexico. He did not attend high school. At the age of 18, and after 4 years of working on the family ranch, Ramirez returned to the USA to resume his education. With much perseverance and some encouraging mentors, he obtained his GED, his Bachelor’s degree and ultimately a PhD degree. In this segment titled “From Ranch to Research,” Robert Ramirez demonstrates that you can become a successful scientist even if the path is neither easy nor conventional.

Speaker Bio

Robert Ramirez

Robert Ramirez recently became Associate Dean of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State University where he enjoys interacting with a diverse group of colleagues and students. He is also Professor of Cellular and Molecular Biology and his lab studies novel responses to osmotic stress in yeast. Continue Reading