CU receives $1.9 million award for biology education and K-12 outreach

By Susan Lang

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has awarded $1.9 million over four years to Cornell, continuing its support of programs in undergraduate biology education and K-12 outreach. This is the fourth HHMI award to Cornell since 1989 in support of these programs. The new award is to encourage undergraduates to pursue careers in science, with a focus on attracting and retaining women and minorities underrepresented in the sciences and to help science teachers and teachers-in-training hone their skills in the rapidly changing and increasingly interdisciplinary field of biology.

"The new grant will support three integrated programs in the broad areas of student research and access to science, curriculum development and K-12 outreach here at Cornell. These programs will connect faculty research with undergraduates at different stages in their academic careers, link Cornell faculty and students to K-12 science teachers and provide teachers-in-training with skills in investigative science," said Sondra Lazarowitz, program director of the HHMI grant and a professor of plant pathology in the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell. The goals are to support retention in the sciences by fostering a community of undergraduate scientists; to provide at-risk students with progressively sophisticated scientific experiences, mentoring and academic support; and to train and support teachers to do hands-on science in K-12 classrooms throughout New York state.

The HHMI Cornell initiative will have several components, including:

• Hughes Scholars, a 10-week summer program for 50 promising undergraduate students to work on faculty-mentored research;

• Cornell/Leadership Alliance Minority Summer Research Program, in which 10 non-Cornell minority juniors will be recruited to join the Hughes Scholars undergraduate research summer program;

• Bio Apprenticeships, a program during the academic year for 30 underrepresented minority and at-risk freshmen and sophomores to introduce them to laboratory skills and give them a positive introduction to research;

• Women in Science, a yearlong program to bring together women on all levels -- undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty -- to mentor and network;

• Bio Ambassadors, a program in which undergraduate students develop lesson plans on a contemporary biology topic and then have the opportunity to teach these lessons in collaboration with a teacher in an inner-city high school in Rochester, N.Y.;

• Cornell Teacher Education Partnership, which, in collaboration with Professor Deborah Trumbull and Assistant Professor Don Duggan-Haas in Cornell's Department of Education, will give science teachers-in-training investigative research experience. The teachers will work for 10 weeks on faculty-mentored summer research, attend workshops and courses on how to develop and evaluate science curricula, and then partner with secondary school science teachers and Cornell faculty to develop a set of science materials and exercises and then use these in the classroom; and

• Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers, which conducts workshops at Cornell and Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as at regional and national teachers' meetings and other venues, to instruct elementary and secondary science teachers and teachers-in-training in hands-on activities for the classroom.

"One barrier to linking research and education is the lack of opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows -- who are the future professors -- to acquire teaching skills and experience," said Peter J. Bruns, vice president for grants and special programs at HHMI and professor emeritus of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell.

Cornell is one of 44 universities to receive similar four-year HHMI grants, totaling $80 million. Since 1988, the institute has awarded $556 million to 236 colleges and universities in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. HHMI is a medical research organization whose principal mission is biomedical research; it employs 336 Hughes investigators who conduct basic medical research in institute laboratories at 70 medical centers and universities nationwide. Through its complementary grants program, HHMI supports science education in the United States and a select group of biomedical scientists abroad.