Oluyemisi “Yemi” Odugbesan, a fourth-year medical student at UNMC, has earned a number of academic accolades and service honors during her educational journey. She will achieve her dream of becoming a doctor when she graduates from the College of Medicine in May.
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Oluyemisi “Yemi” Odugbesan |
But on Feb. 13, she received a special joy when she gave the keynote address at the annual scholarship banquet sponsored by Concerned and Caring Educators (CACE), an association founded by minority teachers and administrators with the Omaha Public School (OPS) System. Odugbesan was a CACE scholarship award winner in 1995 while a student at Omaha Burke High School. She said it was a sweet, humble homecoming to speak to the awardees and remember how she once sat at the same banquet.
“For over a decade now, the Concerned and Caring Educators have been investing in students like you and me as a testament to CACE’s dedication to our success,” Odugbesan told the audience of more than 430 students, parents and OPS personnel. “CACE mentors really helped me and others believe in ourselves and didn’t let anybody tell us that we were black and poor and had too many limitations to pursue our dreams.
“If I had listened to all the things people said I couldn’t do, I wouldn’t be where I am today. For example, I didn’t get into medical school the first time I applied and was flat out told I would never become a doctor. But I never once accepted those initial rejections as my limitation, and today I stand before you ready to graduate from medical school in the top third of my class.”
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Yemi Odugbesan with 2005 CACE Scholarship Award attendees. From left are, Aja Anderson, 11th grade, Central High School; Ebonie Williams, 11th grade, Northwest High School; Rhanice Choice, 7th grade, Holy Name; Divine Shelton, 10th grade, Northwest; Aaron Wynne, 11th grade, Northwest; Andrea Foster, 10th grade, Northwest; Odugbesan; and DeShaun Wright, 11th grade, Beverly White, 11th grade, and Anthony Freeman, 11th grade, all Northwest. |
CACE is one of OPS’s most vital and successful programs in directing more African American children toward a college education. Kathy J. Trotter, principal of Druid Hill Elementary School and CACE scholarship chairwoman, remembered how Odugbesan took the Urban League of Nebraska-sponsored annual tour of historically black colleges and universities before her senior year at Burke. Trotter said Odugbesan was inspired by many of the faculty members and college students she encountered. She also remembers Odugbesan accepting her own CACE scholarship award at the 1995 banquet.
“It was a pleasure inviting Yemi to come back and talk to our students,” Trotter said. “There is a powerful value when the students know that Yemi was an award winner herself just 10 years ago. When she said they can ‘do it,’ too, she’s living proof.”
“It is truly important that Omaha’s young people meet role models like Yemi Odugbesan,” said OPS Superintendent John Mackiel, Ed.D. “Our best and brightest must see that there is access to America’s colleges and universities. A number of OPS principals bring large groups of sixth-grade children to this banquet because we know how vital it is that African American children visualize themselves as college students as early in life as possible. As a former CACE scholarship winner, Yemi is just the best possible example for all of these students.”
CACE began more than 30 years after the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals directed that OPS should desegregate the school system. As part of meeting the directive, OPS’s minority staff was dispersed throughout 93 schools. But at the time, there were only 270 black teachers out of more than 2,900 teachers, and only 55 black men and women certified in administrative positions. Spreading their small numbers so thinly left many black OPS staff with a feeling of isolation. CACE grew out of the need for black staff members to meet together socially and professionally for psychological and emotional support. Since those initial gatherings, CACE has become one of the most productive associations, inspiring Omaha’s African American students on to advanced education and training.
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From left, Bernice L. Nared, principal, Northwest High School; Dr. John Mackiel, superintendent, Omaha Public Schools; Yemi Odugbesan; and Kathy J. Trotter, CACE scholarship chairwoman and principal of Druid Hill Elementary School. |
A former president of UNMC’s Student National Medical Association, Odugbesan received her bachelor’s of science degree in biochemistry from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1999. She received a master’s degree in international health in 2000 from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has held undergraduate and graduate research assistant or fellow positions in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington; the department of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Kentucky; the department of chemistry at UNL; the department of surgery at UNMC; and a research and clinical internship in the department of neurosurgery at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.
Of Nigerian descent, Odugbesan has authored two research papers on health care issues in Nigeria and conducted a two-day workshop in Nigeria on “Women Power in Politics: Building Grassroots Democracy in Africa.” She served with other health students as part of Child Family Health International’s medical mission to Ecuador and will join a medical mission to Haiti during the 2005 spring break as part of an Omaha church-based initiative. Her overseas medical opportunities inspired her to start a foundation for patients in the pediatric neurosurgical ward at the University College Hospital in Nigeria. She says this is the accomplishment of which she is most proud.
“There was so much I wanted to tell the CACE students,” Odugbesan said. “I talked about what I call ‘the eight F’s’ – faith, fortitude (resilience), forthrightness (honesty), family, moral fiber (character), friends, focus and fidelity.
“I asked the students what their deepest fear was. I told them that when I was in high school, my deepest fear was that I was not being accepted for who I was because I didn’t fit some preconceived notion of how a black female should talk, act, live or think. I am a classically trained pianist and vocalist. I enjoy every kind of music from gospel to some kinds of rock and roll. I love to downhill ski, ride motorbikes and horses, surf and rock climb. If you shut your eyes and listened to that description again, at least one of you would not visualize my face. By virtue of the hue of my skin, I was too dark for the white kids, and by the virtue of the character of my English, I was too white for the black kids.”
“I gave the students a poem to remember: ‘Life is just a minute, only sixty seconds in it, forced upon you, can’t refuse it, didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, but it’s up to you to use it, you must suffer if you lose, give an account if you abuse it, just a tiny minute, but eternity is in it.’ I want all of those students to use that minute wisely, use it humbly, use it efficiently and effectively, and I told them if they do these things, they too shall meet with success.”