Three win HHMI grants for programs merging teaching, research

Three win HHMI grants for programs merging teaching, research

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice University, which provides more than half of its engineering and science undergraduates with research experience, has won three highly sought grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to develop national model programs that infuse undergraduate teaching with cutting-edge research.

The institute named Rice professors Bonnie Bartel and Jennifer West to the elite ranks of its HHMI Professor Program April 5. The highly competitive program provides four-year, $1 million grants for top researchers to develop innovative programs that combine undergraduate teaching and research. HHMI has also announced the continuation of its funding for Rice’s Rebecca Richards-Kortum.

“The HHMI Professor Program aims to reinvigorate science and engineering teaching by tapping into the excitement that flows from laboratory research,” Rice President David Leebron said. “Rice’s leadership in this endeavor is evident from the fact that three of the 40 awards given over the life of this program have gone to Rice faculty — the most of any institution. Professors Bartel, West and Richards-Kortum are extraordinary exemplars of the Rice tradition of great researchers dedicated to undergraduate education.”

Jennifer West

Bartel is the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Her HHMI research program, titled “From Reading to Research: Introducing Undergraduates to Research From the Outside In,” will attempt to draw freshmen and sophomores into science by involving them in small, intimate classes and practical lab training.

“Freshman science lecture courses are often by necessity large and impersonal, and we risk losing some of our best students if that is the only exposure they have to biology before their junior year,” Bartel said.

Bartel will develop a course designed to introduce freshmen to the realities and excitement of lab research. The class will consist of multiple small-group discussions about newly published research. Students will delve into the ins and outs of day-to-day research with laboratory tours, meetings with researchers and reviews of experimental data and equipment.

Bonnie Bartel

For sophomores, Bartel will implement a laboratory module designed to serve as a gateway into more extensive projects in faculty research labs. In the module, pairs of students will identify the products of an uncharacterized plant enzyme. In the final phase, the students will conduct the first structural studies of the products of their target enzymes. In follow-ups to the lab, the students will have the opportunity to work in faculty labs to continue studying their enzymes and prepare peer-reviewed research publications.

West is the director of Rice’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering and professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering. Her program, “Educating Interdisciplinary Scientists for Bionanotechnology: A Bottom-Up Approach,” includes four components: a high-school summer academy, a new seminar-style course to introduce freshmen to the interdisciplinary elements of bionanotechnology, a biology course designed for upper-level students in engineering and the physical sciences, and a summer internship program for both Rice and non-Rice engineering and physics students who want to participate in bionanotechnology research.

Rebecca Richards-Kortum

The high school summer academy will expand upon an annual program Rice has conducted with the Science Academy of South Texas, adding a research component to allow students to experience life in the lab. Both the freshman seminar and the accelerated course in cell and molecular biology will target undergraduate engineering and science majors at Rice interested in biomedical research with little life sciences training.

“There is intense interest among our students in pursuing biomedical problems, and these courses will dramatically expand the pool of students with both the interest and the knowledge that’s required to take part,” West said.

Richards-Kortum is department chair of bioengineering and the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Bioengineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering. Her program, “Health-Care Technology Development and Assessment: Integrating Research and Undergraduate Education in Biomedical Engineering,” is one of 20 inaugural programs funded under the HHMI Professor Program. HHMI funding allowed Richards-Kortum to develop an introductory course in bioengineering that focuses on how new health-care technologies are developed to address world health challenges. She’s also worked with Michele Follen at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to develop a summer intern program that provides undergraduate bioengineering students the opportunity to shadow research physicians seeing patients and working in the lab.

“Being an HHMI professor has provided me with a unique opportunity to fully engage undergraduates in biomedical research and development,” Richards-Kortum said. “As a teacher, it is so exciting to see students from multiple backgrounds become immersed in developing bioengineering solutions to the health-care challenges facing our world. ”