Apr 24, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has awarded a $1.5 million grant to Harvey Mudd College (HMC) to create more engaging science classes, bring real-world research experiences to students and increase the diversity of students who study science.

The grant, which will be paid over four years, is part of $60 million in grants announced by HHMI this week. The awards were the results of a competition that invited 226 of the nation’s leading baccalaureate-granting institutions to apply. One hundred ninety-two submitted proposals and, after three rounds of peer-review, 48 grants were awarded.

More than a quarter of the awardees have never received an HHMI grant before. HMC has received three consecutive grants, beginning in 2000, then renewed in 2004 and again in 2008, for a total of $4.2 million.

“Over the last three summers, the HHMI grant has supported 78 summer research students, and we expect to support more than 30 students this summer,” said David Asai, Stuart Mudd Professor of Biology and chair of the Department of Biology at HMC. “These students represent all nine degree programs at Harvey Mudd College and were mentored by faculty members in all seven HMC departments.

“Most of the summer students were engaged in research on campus, but the grant has also supported students who did research at UCLA, Harvard, the Genome Institute of Singapore and in Alaska. Of the 78 students supported in the last three summers, 37 have graduated; 14 are now in Ph.D. programs and 5 are in professional programs, including medical school.”

The current HHMI grant has also provided funds for collaborative grants that involve faculty investigators in biology who collaborate with a faculty member in another department. In four years, HMC has funded 13 collaborative projects involving 14 different faculty members from 6 HMC departments and 37 different students from HMC’s departments of biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, physics and three other institutions: Goucher College, the Joint Sciences Program at The Claremont Colleges and Pomona College.

In addition, the grant has enabled the implementation of new laboratory modules in molecular biology, computational biology, genetics and a molecular biology experiment incorporated in freshman chemistry (Chem25). The current grant also supports the molecular biology laboratory that is part of the HMC Summer Institute.

Directed by Professor of Biology Catherine McFadden, the 2008 HHMI grant will enable HMC to continue current successful programs, including the support of student summer research, collaborative mini-grants to faculty working in the area of computational biology and the continued development and implementation of laboratory modules.

“The 2008 grant will also enable us to explore two exciting new ventures,” Asai said. “Under the leadership of the grant’s co-director, Professor of Computer Science Ran Libeskind-Hadas, faculty and students in biology and computer science will develop a new freshman-level introductory course that integrates the two disciplines, currently taught as CS5 and Bio52. The idea is to plan the new course, CB552, then implement it with approximately 36 freshmen in 2009-10 and another 36 students in 2010-11. We will then assess the effectiveness of the new course which, if successful, will be expanded to include a larger number of students in 2011-12.”

The second new venture will be the Future Faculty Fellows, which will bring to HMC senior postdoctoral scientists who are interested in pursuing teaching careers in small colleges. Each fellow will spend up to two years at HMC, helping to teach courses and mentoring research students. Each fellow will be provided close mentoring by current faculty members, including team-teaching and sharing research students.

HHMI is the nation’s largest private supporter of science education. It has invested more than $1.2 billion in grants to reinvigorate life science education at both research universities and liberal arts colleges and to engage the nation’s leading scientists in teaching.

One of the world’s largest philanthropies, HHMI is a nonprofit medical research organization that employs hundreds of leading biomedical scientists working at the forefront of their fields. HHMI has an endowment of approximately $18.7 billion. Its headquarters are located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.