The power of multimedia technology as a tool for academic instruction and research is widely acknowledged. Less often noted, however, is the role it is likely to play in shaping the demographic composition of the academy of the future.

The World Wide Web - easy of access and free of charge for Internet users - could, for example, prove to be an important medium of outreach in scholarly disciplines which have to date demonstrated a poor track-record in attracting minority students.

This situation is particularly acute in the physical sciences where, despite funding and recruitment programs intended to bring Black, Hispanic and Native Americans into the field, the minority presence remains disproportionately low.

A new science Web site has been established at Hunter College by Robert P. Dottin, a professor of biology in the college's Department of Biological Sciences and Center for Study of Gene Structure & Function. Its goal is to promote interaction among minority scientists - particularly Latino, Black and Native American - and also between scientists and minority students. These interactions enhance the professional development of scientists and encourage students to pursue careers in science.

Titled The Just/Garcia/Hill Science Web Site (JGH), it honors three important biologists of an earlier era. Ernest Everett Just, an African-American developmental biologist, pioneered theories and research on the external factors that control cell specialization. Fabian Garcia was a Chicano agronomist and biotechnologist whose work led to the development of novel crops. Rosa Minoka Hill was a Native American woman physician. The URL for the site's home page is:

http://sonhouse.hunter.cuny.edu/JGHweb/msweb.html

The site includes information geared both to scientists and students. For students, the site gives access to a wide range of introductory materials. Some of them are purely informational (lists of academic programs and scholarships, for example). Others are intended to encourage students still uncertain of their career commitment.

The latter sites include first-hand accounts by minority students and faculty of their experiences in the sciences. There are reports by undergraduates who have taken part in the Summer Internship Program at Hunter and by students who have graduated from the Hunter science programs and gone on to other universities. One of them, Ismael Perez, now a graduate student in biology at Vanderbilt University, recalls how at Hunter "whenever I ventured from the true path, my mentors....were there to shape me, [bringing out] the nerd without affecting the party animal."

In addition, in a short QuickTime video clip, Hunter Assistant Professor of Biology Jill Bargonetti-Chavarria discusses her reasons for choosing a career in scientific research. And Hunter student Raphael Rios describes how a series of high-level experiments he conducted under the federally-funded Minority Access to Research Careers Program (MARC) led to the publication of his work.

Both the MARC and the Minority Biomedical Research Support programs at Hunter are funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). And Hunter, with its ethnically diverse student body, has been designated by the NIH as one of a small number of "Research Centers in Minority Institutions" (RCMI) across the U.S. The JGH Science Web site has hotlinks both to the NIH and RCMI Web sites, as well as to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Links to these sites are among the features that will prove especially valuable to scientists, the JGH Web site's other primary target audience. Among the professional resources unique to the site is an online database of Black, Hispanic and Native American scientists, with information including professional biographies and reports on current research.

The JGH Web site also offers links to online scientific journals, a database of paper abstracts, schedules of conferences, symposia and meetings, and lists of grants, fellowships and job opportunities. Many of these listings are of general scientific interest; others deal specifically with minority issues.

Bulletin boards and forums provide environments in which issues pertinent to minorities in the sciences can be discussed and debated. One can access a 1995 New York Times article reporting on the issue of racial parity in the use of information technology, or a report on an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at which the topic of racial diversity in the sciences was raised. Or a report of the honors bestowed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on Harold Amos, a Black professor of microbiology at Harvard for his "tremendous success...in encouraging and facilitating the entry and advancement of under- represented minorities into careers in medicine and biomedical research."

It is, in fact, thanks to the NAS that the two audiences for the Just/Garcia/Hill Web site - students and scientists - will be linked together. Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the NAS, has identified about 100 members of the Academy who will volunteer to act as "virtual mentors" to minority students in the sciences, offering online guidance and encouragement.

Most of these mentors are not members of minority groups (the NAS still has a very small minority enrollment). But their availability through the JGH Web site is yet another resource providing guidance and inspiration for minority students who have thus far had a difficult time entering scientific disciplines.

Such inspiration is aptly symbolized by the logo chosen for the JGH home page, Romare Bearden's "The Lamp," a print created by the African American artist in 1984 to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Brown vs. The Board of Education, the decision which desegregated public schools.

The image is of a young black woman reading a book by the light of a kerosene lamp, though the implication is that the book itself is the "lamp" of the title. With help from resources like the Just/Garcia/Hill Web site, one day that symbol of illumination could be a computer screen.