Dr. Crystal Johnson is a role model – certainly as a female scientist, and a member of a minority group, but
also as a successful young scientist who manages to have a good time while doing exemplary research. In
spite of the fact that she doesn't choose to think of herself as exemplary, her peers think otherwise. She
has been awarded the 2002 National Role Model Award from
Minority Access in Washington, DC,
which focuses on increasing the participation of minorities in biomedical research. She participated in
the 2003 Minority Trainee Research Forum in San Diego, California and was given the 2009 Moss Point Jackson
County NAACP Achievement Award, in Moss Point, Mississippi, where she grew up. She serves on the
American Society for Microbiology Committee on
Microbiological Issues Impacting Minorities (CMIIM), and she is also the Associate Editor of CMIIM's The
Minority Microbiology Mentor. Crystal also serves as a Diversity Mentor in the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill's
Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity.
According to Dr. Sheri Wischusen, Director of Undergraduate Research Education for the College of Science
at LSU, who helped Crystal find housing and other resources for her summer research students the first year
she was at LSU, "With women and underrepresented minorities, we're doing a good job. There's a snowball
effect - once you get a few good role models like Crystal, that draws people in. And like Crystal, our
women and minority students are fabulous."
