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Who is Evangeline Motley? From Researcher to Role Model
In high school, she took all of the science courses and thought they were very interesting. Since she was doing very well in those science courses, her mother suggested that she think about becoming a doctor. Soon other people in her family were talking about her becoming a doctor. Although this put a lot of pressure on her to do well in her classes, she didn’t worry too much, because she knew her family would be proud of her no matter what she chose to do. She graduated from high school in 1976 at the top of her class. College YearsEvangeline wanted to stay close to home and go to an in-state university. She had visited the University of Virginia in Charlottesville as a high school student and thought the campus was beautiful. She knew it was a very good school and felt it would be hard but worthwhile to go to this school. When she was accepted to the University, she was thrilled. Although the classes were very hard, she stuck with it and graduated with a degree in Biology in 1980. When Evangeline was still in college, a person from a drug company came to talk to the students about working in industry. She was very interested in his talk and thought it would be nice to do research for a drug company and make new drugs to help make sick people well. It was then that she decided to work as a researcher and not become a doctor. Her first job was working in a laboratory in the Anesthesiology Department at the University of Virginia Medical Center. She studied how blood flowed in animals and that’s how she first became interested in physiology. To learn more, she took a course in Anatomy and Physiology at the local community college. After taking that course and working in her job as a researcher for 4 years, she decided to go on to graduate school and learn even more about physiology. Graduate SchoolIn 1984, she went to Washington, D.C. to study at Howard University. Her goal was to get a Masters degree and then get a job with a drug company. When she got to Howard, she was told that the department wanted the students to get PhD degrees rather than Masters degrees. While she was studying for her PhD, she worked one summer at a drug company in Pennsylvania. It went so well that she ended up doing the research for her degree there instead of at Howard. She graduated in 1991 with her PhD and then went to the University of Cincinnati in Ohio for more training. After working there for 2 years, she had hoped to finally get a job at a drug company. However, instead, she had the chance to take a job at a college. She had said that she wanted to do research, not be a teacher. However, several of the people she worked with had told her that she would be a good role model for minority students and that she should think about teaching at a Historically Black College or University. So she went ahead and accepted the job at Meharry Medical College. She was hired in the Department of Physiology in January 1993, which is now called the Department of Anatomy and Physiology. In addition to teaching physiology to medical, dental, and graduate students, she still is able to do research. She also has students that work in her lab and do research so they can get their PhDs. So far she has trained three PhD students in her laboratory. For her research, she studies the heart and how it works, especially when people have high blood pressure. Besides teaching and doing research, she also takes time to work on several committees both for her department and for the college. She also has been on a committee for APS, the Porter Physiology Development Committee, which gives money to minority graduate students so they can earn their degrees. She also reviews grants for other groups that give money for research, like the American Heart Association. For FunFor fun, Dr. Motley plays tennis, travels, and reads books. She also likes photography and arts and crafts. She enjoys walking to raise money for the American Heart Association and the Diabetes Association. She also teaches elementary and high school students at her church. AdviceDr. Motley suggests that students thinking about a career in physiology talk to physiologists and go to summer programs at universities, which will lets them see what physiology is all about. High school students can sometimes find laboratories to work in during the school year and then present their research at science fairs. She has had a young man work in her laboratory for his junior and senior years of high school and then win the Middle Tennessee Science and Engineering Fair for two years in a row. He went on to national competition both times. He is now attending Indiana University.
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