Bertrade Mbom, studying for her doctorate in language and linguistics, rises from her desk to stretch. Glancing out of a sixth-floor window on the Essex University campus, she admires the scenery. It is springtime. On the ground, a group of toddlers walk busily without intent. It doesn't take long for her to pick out her daughter, her namesake. The younger Bertrade seems mesmerized by clusters of yellow buttercups growing in abundance in the courtyard. She collects as many as she can hold in her small hands; later that afternoon, she gives them to her mom.
Mbom (now Bertrade Banoum) says that passion and attention to detail helped her daughter grow and flourish into an accomplished student at Carnegie Mellon. The two women still talk daily.
Earlier this year, Mbom (S'08) was one of five recipients nationally to receive the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Gilliam Fellowship award, which will pay for her graduate education in biological research. Mbom is working with a group of compounds that can alter cell division; she has the potential to discover how to stop cancer in its tracks.
Despite her intense undergraduate studies in biological sciences, she has found time to help establish the university's Coaching Minority Progress and Academic Success in Science (COMPASS). It provides minority freshmen in the Mellon College of Science with mentors, information about university resources, and a venue to get to know one another.
Her mom isn't surprised by her daughter's initiative. "In our [African] culture, we are taught to become educated not for education's sake, but for life's sake." -- Kate Dunfee
