Bil Clemons Receives Malcom Prize for Excellence in Mentoring

The Shirley M. Malcom Prize for Excellence in Mentoring, founded in 2021, has been awarded this year to Bil Clemons, the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Biochemistry.

The annual prize is named for Shirley Malcom, a senior trustee at Caltech, and honors a professor "who, through mentoring, supports the achievement and well-being of students. Criteria include, but are not limited to, effective mentoring practices such as: giving regular feedback, guidance, and advice; providing access to academic and professional information, resources, and opportunities; and helping to ensure a safe, encouraging, and inclusive environment."

Students who recommended Clemons for this prize noted that "Bil fosters a community of learning in his lab, where all his trainees are extremely familiar with each other's work," and that Clemons's mentorship "transcends academic guidance; it embodies the nurturing potential and the fostering of an inclusive environment where every student is encouraged to excel."

Clemons helped organize the Black Lives Matter program at Caltech in June 2020, facilitated the work of Black Scientists and Engineers of Caltech (BSEC), and helped found Black@Caltech. As one letter of nomination says, "Black@Caltech now has over 175 members from every corner of the Caltech workforce, and he [Clemons] still attends every meeting." A member of the selection committee for the Malcom Prize notes that "Bil has been mentoring all of Caltech in how to work effectively for DEI. Caltech would be a worse place without the hard work of Bil."

Mentoring played an important role in Clemons's own life and career. Late in college, a professor asked him, almost in passing, "Hey Bil, what do you plan to do when you graduate?" Clemons recalls. "Between classes, I was working 30 or 40 hours a week to pay rent, and on top of that trying to get into the lab as much as possible. I just had no bandwidth to think about anything else. So, when my professor asked me that question, I answered, 'I don't know. I guess I'm going to look for a job.' The professor replied, 'You should think about grad school. You love research, and you're good at it.'"

"It never occurred to me up until that moment that grad school was something I could ever think about," Clemons says. "Now I can point to that brief conversation and see how it changed the path of my life. I know I've had that impact on people in my life too. With trainees, you need to take those moments to ask not just what the next experiment is, but also 'How are you thinking about your future? Are you doing the things you need to in order to be successful in the way you want to be?'"

The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) recently appointed Clemons as its science program officer for diversity, equity, and inclusion in science, so his skills as a mentor will soon be reaching an even wider audience. Clemons finds inspiration in a slogan he learned at CZI: "Representative science is better science."

"That's not something anybody can argue with," Clemons says. "The reality is that all the flavors matter. People who come from rural backgrounds, people who come from very religious backgrounds, people who come from the mountains or the beaches or any place else, they all matter in terms of bringing together a broader picture of the best way forward when we're trying to solve the world's problems."

Past recipients of the Malcom Prize are Scott Cushing, assistant professor of chemistry; and Marianne Bronner, the Edward B. Lewis Professor of Biology and director of the Beckman Institute.