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David Wilkes, M.D., has come full circle. In 1992 when he arrived at the IU School of Medicine as a junior faculty member, he was a scholar in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Minority Medical Faculty Development Program. Now, 15 years later, he’s one of the program’s success stories and its principle investigator.
Renamed the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, after a former director of the program and a founding member of its national advisory committee, the program is one of the nation’s leading initiatives committed to increasing the number of minorities on medical school faculties. In August it relocated its national office from Silver Spring, Maryland to Indianapolis.
“The program has an extraordinary track record,” says Wilkes, “with its list of former scholars reading like a who’s who in academic medicine.”
Through four-year postdoctoral research fellowships, the program encourages minority physicians to pursue careers in academic medicine and science. Young faculty members selected for the highly competitive program must have a defined mentor and area of research and spend 70 percent of their time engaged in research activities. Amos Scholars receive a yearly stipend and additional funding for research support. At the program’s annual meeting, they discuss their progress with the national advisory committee.
“The national advisory committee members are elite members of the academic medical community,” says Wilkes. “Having this network of mentors oversee your career is an extraordinary thing.”
Wilkes says the goal of the program is to turn out highly qualified individuals who can be a beacon for other up-and-coming minority scientists. “It’s about building a network and enhancing the camaraderie young scientists need to flourish.”
A Philadelphia native, Wilkes had a penchant for science growing up. His mother was a nurse, his father an electrical engineer, and Wilkes himself worked as a mechanic during summers in high school. By the time he entered college at Villanova, Wilkes was set on a career in medicine.
In medical school at Temple University, he found himself most interested in why people got sick. “I figured if we knew the basis behind why people develop certain illnesses, then we could develop more effective interventions and impact thousands of people every day.”
It was also at Temple that Wilkes first learned the value of a good mentor.
Wilkes and Dr. Bennett Lorber were an unlikely match. Wilkes was an African-American medical student, who, at that time, was interested in cardio-thoracic surgery, and Lorber, Jewish and a junior faculty member, was an infectious disease specialist. But the pair hit it off.
“We both loved jazz…we just clicked,” recalls Wilkes. “He’s one of the best clinicians I ever met. He embodied compassion, intellect, academic curiosity – he had all that stuff. He’s the guy I wanted to be like.”
Having gone to medical school on an Air Force scholarship, and after completing his residency in internal medicine at Temple University, Wilkes served active duty at the R.L. Thompson Hospital at Carswell Air Force Base, in Texas. Working in the ICU there, he developed an interest in pulmonology and decided to pursue a career in academic medicine. Once out of the Air Force, he did his pulmonary fellowship training at the University of Southwest Texas Medical Center, devoting his last two years to research.
Today, Wilkes is the Dr. Calvin H. English Professor of Medicine, Microbiology, and Immunology and director of the Center for Immunobiology at the IU School of Medicine. His research is focused on immune mechanisms that contribute to lung transplant rejection. In 2006 he launched ImmuneWorks, a biotech company that develops novel therapeutics and diagnostic tests for patients with pulmonary conditions.
With his career progressing at IU, Wilkes looked for ways to merge his two interests of research and minority faculty recruitment. By then, he knew three things: Faculty recruitment has to start early with high school and undergrad students; there must be systems in place to “get kids into the pipeline”; and to be successful, it takes vision and support from school leadership.
At IUSM, “Dean Craig Brater has made this a priority,” Wilkes says, “which is evident by the other minority training programs the school has developed for students.”
Wilkes believes the Amos program dovetails nicely with these other efforts. He mentions three programs in particular: the Edwin T. Harper Scholars program, provideing scholarships for minority graduate students; the Bridges to the Doctorate program, a collaboration with Jackson State University that encourages master’s degree students to pursue doctorates in science; and a brand new partnership with the Crispus Attucks Medical Magnet High School in Indianapolis that will nurture student interest and success in the sciences and offer teachers research fellowships to better equip them in the classroom.
Wilkes sums up by saying, “With all of these programs in place, it tells minority students and faculty that IU is a great place to be.”
Learn more about the impact the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program is having on academic medicine.
