GRAD NABS HUGHES HONOR

By Jeannie Nugent/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

The playful, brightly colored high heels and daisies decorating the cobalt blue expandable file is a contradiction to the focused, driven and mature 17-year-old thumbing through its contents to put her hands on just the right document.

“Here it is,” says Richleen Wimberly, as she reads from a paper that extols the virtues of the most recent goal she has accomplished.

Wimberly, who graduates this week from Pine Bluff High School, is the only student from Arkansas accepted into the prestigious Howard Hughes Biomedical Institute in New Orleans. Only 50 in the nation are chosen.

The intense summer program is designed to give students a head start as they begin their medical school education.

Wimberly’s acceptance to the program and the prominent private college — Xavier University of Louisiana — she will attend next fall can only be described as “serendipity” or perhaps just plain, old-fashioned gumption.

In the 11th grade, Wimberly said her aunt e-mailed her information about the Howard Hughes program. She applied, but never got a response. That didn’t deter the ambitious teenager.

“I called and called. I would have my mom call, then my dad to call. I never got a live voice,” she says. “I sent e-mail after e-mail and I never got an answer.”

It was only when she discovered that funding for the program had been eliminated that she gave up.

Last summer, the high school honor student began her search for the college that would best help her fulfill her dreams. That’s when she found Xavier University.

“It’s number one for placing African Americans in medical school,” she says, quickly ticking off other selection criteria she found in her research of the institution. Then she hit a snag: because it is private the tuition is significantly higher than a state college and they never offer full scholarships.

“I visited them in November and basically I was told that if you get a scholarship offer from them, you’re lucky and should be grateful,” she says. The school not only accepted Wimberly, but also awarded her a $16,000 annual scholarship.

That still leaves $27,000 per year that Wimberly will have to come up with by herself. She spent the summer locked up in her room, beating the Internet path to find funds for the costly tuition. She was awarded only a little over $2,000 from separate funds. The daughter of Richard and Joyce Wimberly, she was knocked out of much of the scholarships because of her parents’ income. Her mother is the cafeteria manager at Pine Bluff High School and her father is a major at the Arkansas Department of Correction.

“But we still cannot afford for me to go to that school. My parents told me not to worry about it because if I wanted to succeed, I would. They told me I’d just have to worry about that at a later date,” she says.

Wimberly did receive an answer to a prayer, however, when she spoke to former Watson Chapel High School grad Nana Aisha Adamu who is attending Xavier this year.

“She told me she got accepted to the Howard Hughes Biomedical program and I was ‘Wait a minute,’” she says with a laugh. Adamu told her that the program had been moved to Xavier’s campus and was going strong.

Wimberly was awarded a scholarship for $1,570 of the institute’s $1,620 summer tuition.

She says the road to her dream of becoming an emergency physician will be tough and expensive, but she’s up for the challenge.

“I work better under stressful situations anyway,” she says.