CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A comprehensive University of Illinois program geared for the education of undergraduate students in the life sciences and fostering community outreach has received a $1.6 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
The grant to the U. of I. is part of $91.1 million in four-year grants awarded by the institute to 58 universities in 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The award winners were selected from 191 proposals made by 205 institutions that were invited to submit proposals. This award is the third HHMI grant to the U. of I.
"I am very excited and thankful to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for its confidence and support of our on-going program," said Susan Fahrbach, an entomologist, neuroscientist and new director of the U. of I. Hughes Program. "We will be able to build upon the excellent progress made by former director Sondra Lazarowitz. We have an exciting set of programs that have had a broad impact on our campus, our community, the state of Illinois and the nation."
The grant pays for Hughes Undergraduate Research Fellows, many of whom come from historically black institutions and colleges where minorities are underrepresented in the life sciences, to attend summer programs that include hands-on training in research labs, seminars and workshops. Since 1993, 284 students have gone through the program, and 121 faculty from 18 U. of I. units have served in advisory or mentoring roles.
The Hughes Program in the U. of I. School of Life Sciences also supports:
· The specially designed CalcPrime and ChemPrime summer program offered to incoming freshmen. CalcPrime uses a computer-based, highly visual approach to calculus that lets students whose placement scores were below requirements for Math 120 learn at their own pace and see the relevance of mathematics to the life sciences. ChemPrime similarly prepares the students for introductory chemistry classes.
· High school science teachers who participate in the Footlocker Program, which provides training, new ideas, workshops and teaching kits for use in their classrooms. Among the opportunities are seminars in biotechnology and an equipment-loan program that allows participants to take their new knowledge back to their classrooms.
· Middle-school science teachers enrolled in the Prairie Flowers Program, which provides for the development of hands-on teaching kits, training and computer networking opportunities especially for teachers in rural areas. The interaction also involves U. of I. undergraduates and faculty. A primary goal is to encourage girls and minority students to explore science careers.
· The BOAST (Bouchet Outreach and Achievement in Science and Technology) outreach program, named for Edward Alexander Bouchet, the first black to earn a doctorate from a U.S. university. The program is designed to boost the scientific interest of primary and secondary schoolchildren by linking U. of I. engineering and science students with children from low-income housing sites and other at-risk youth in the community.
· An evaluation of the success on student performance of the previously HHMI-funded BioCalc course, a computer-based course that teaches calculus to students majoring in the life sciences and uses examples from the life sciences and incorporates Mathematica software.
More information about the HHMI grants awarded nationally can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hhmi.org/undergrad98. Details of the U. of I. programs are at http://www.life.uiuc.edu/hughes/.
The institute is a medical research organization whose principal purpose is the pursuit of biomedical research. It employs scientists in cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience and structural biology. More than 330 Hughes investigators conduct medical research in HHMI laboratories at 72 academic medical centers and universities nationwide. Through its complementary grants program, HHMI supports a select group of researchers abroad as well as science education in the United States.