Joseph Alila, PhD '99, a chemist with Icon Services, Inc., a company that specializes in making stable isotope compounds.

Thirty Kenyan graduate students work and conduct research at Binghamton, 21 of them in the Chemistry Department. Most of them can trace their academic lineage back to Joseph Alila, PhD '99, and, through him, to Joseph Sylvanovich, MS '72.

Turn the clock back 30 years. Joseph Sylvanovich, fresh out of graduate school with his master's in chemistry, joins the Peace Corps to teach chemistry at St. Paul's Amukura, a high school in western Kenya.

At Binghamton, Sylvanovich was recognized as a brilliant student who had received a National Science Foundation award, published two papers and won the admiration of his mentor, Professor (now Emeritus) Stanley K. Madan.

In Kenya, he would become something of a legend.

Fast forward to 1976. Joseph Alila, a young man with a keen interest in the sciences, is drawn away from his home town near the Tanzanian border to enroll at St. Paul's Amukura, a school with an excellent reputation in the sciences -- a reputation earned, as Alila came to believe, because of its gifted American teacher, Joseph Sylvanovich.

"He was an outstanding teacher," said Alila, who came to the school with an interest in electrical engineering. Sylvanovich's teaching of chemistry made it so irresistibly fascinating, he said, that he decided to switch. Sylvanovich's approach was indisputably successful: Alila and many of his classmates "scored the highest you can in that subject," he said, when they took the practical chemistry examination prior to graduation.

Duncan Omune and his wife, Leila Otieno, a graduate student in geography

Alila pursued chemistry and earned his bachelor's in education, graduating with first-class honors in chemistry, math and education from Kenyata University. He taught high school for a while before he went on to earn his master's in chemistry and education there. After that he taught at Moi Diploma College, and, later, at Egerton University in Njoro, the main campus, near the town of Nakuru.

In 1993, he left Kenya to study at the University of Alberta in Canada, then transferred to Binghamton in 1994, which he chose for its excellent reputation -- not knowing that Binghamton was the alma mater of his former teacher and mentor, Sylvanovich.

When Alila found out, through Professor Madan, that Sylvanovich had attended BU, he was profoundly moved. A vital, but long dormant, connection from his past -- one that had altered the course of his life -- had come full circle to meet him again. .

Not all of Binghamton's Kenyan graduate students are in chemistry. Meet Nasser Malit, a graduate student in anthropology, studying with Professor Philip Rightmire. Malit met Rightmire in Kenya in summer 1993, when Rightmire was there to research Pleistocene hominid fossils. "I was an undergraduate in anthropology at the University of Nairobi and also a volunteer field assistant for Dr. Meave Leakey (of the Leakey fossil-hunting family, famous for its 70 years of continuous paleoanthropological work in Africa), who was working in Northern Kenya fossil deposits," said Malit. "There, I met many palaeoanthropologists. Other researchers from other institutions in the U.S. wanted to take me as their student, but Phil sent the first paperwork and ensured that I got admission and funding. He was also studying what I am interested in, and it was easy for us to team. I am happy that I came to work with him."

A proud legacy begins

Alila's move to Binghamton turned out to be ground-breaking for several of his students and colleagues from Egerton University: Through him, they learned about Binghamton and he, in turn, informed the Chemistry Department about these highly qualified people who were eager to come here to pursue their studies.

One of Alila's former students from Egerton is Duncan Omune, a PhD candidate in organic chemistry. "I liked the chemistry curriculum at BU and was interested in the research that was going on," he said. Omune came to campus in 1999 and is a member of Chemistry Professor Scott Handy's research team. His research involves synthesizing compounds and derivatives that inhibit HIV. "I'm targeting one spot in the life cycle of the virus," he said.

"I just identified talent, gave the names of possible students, and they took it from there," said Alila, who has high praise for the department's staff, particularly secretary Pat Gorman and administrative assistant Jean Dorak. "Case in point: My cousin, Steven Odongo, who now works for Professor Alistair Lees -- apart from giving his name [to the department], the next thing I heard was [that] he was coming," Alila said. "It's a sweet surprise to continue hearing, 'So-and-so arrived from Kenya.'"

A win/win for BU and Kenyan graduate students

"Almost every professor at Binghamton has a Kenyan student," noted Joseph Alila, PhD '99.

In fact, one-third of BU's graduate students in chemistry are from Kenya, confirmed Richard Quest, director of laboratories for the department.

"Our Kenyan students are good students," said Chemistry Department Chair Alistair Lees, who also described them as polite, well educated, conscientious, highly motivated, dedicated and "incredibly hard working." In addition, he said, they speak English very well, which is vital, since entering graduate students serve as teaching assistants for two to three years. "They have to get up in front of classrooms to speak, and they run undergraduate labs," said Lees.

Lees also noted that although the proportion of Kenyan students is particularly high now, many of them are about to graduate with their PhDs. "The Chemistry Department has always been very multicultural," he said. As he explained it, this is partly because too few Americans are going into the sciences at the graduate level; consequently, universities nationwide compete for qualified graduate students. And, frankly, many other universities can afford to pay their graduate students better than Binghamton can.

The Kenyan graduate students at Binghamton, however, view the University as a wonderful opportunity to further their studies. "You have to understand that in my country, the likelihood of getting admitted to a university is very slim," said Miriam Ngundi, PhD candidate in analytical chemistry, who learned about BU through Frederick Owuor, PhD '01, a former student and fellow faculty member of Alila's at Egerton. "When they told me, 'There's an opportunity for you to get admitted and get a teaching assistantship,' that was enough for me to apply."

"Funding opportunities for graduate students at Binghamton are laudable," said Nasser Malit, PhD student in anthropology, who is also from Kenya. Moreover, he added, "Binghamton has the necessary facilities for achieving what you want."