Princeton has been awarded $2.2 million from the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute (HHMI) to support the University's efforts to improve
education in the biological sciences.
The Undergraduate
Science Education Initiative grants are awarded competitively every
four years. Princeton has been funded continually since the grants
began in 1989, and is one of only five institutions to receive the
maximum possible award this year.
Fred Hughson, incoming
director of the Princeton/HHMI Undergraduate Research Education
Program, said that the award will help the University further expand
its efforts to improve biology education in secondary schools and
create new opportunities for undergraduates.
"Almost half
of the funds are dedicated to outreach efforts targeting high school
and middle school science education," said Hughson, an associate
professor of molecular biology. "The essential element is an annual
summer workshop that brings secondary school teachers to Princeton,
where they interact with faculty and develop laboratory experiments to
share with their students."
The summer workshops have engaged
450 teachers and more than 300,000 students in most New Jersey school
districts since funding began in 1990. The new funding will provide the
opportunity for Princeton to partner with the school district of
Philadelphia in order to train teachers and provide equipment and
materials for the creation of satellite learning centers in
Philadelphia high schools.
Some of the remaining funds will be
used for a summer research program for Princeton students and others
selected from a nationwide pool of undergraduates attending small
colleges with limited resources for research. The rest will be
devoted to developing a new upper-level undergraduate course in
biological imaging. This course, cited by HHMI as a "particularly
creative and innovative aspect of the proposal," will center on the
construction -- from scratch -- of research-grade microscopes and their
use in student-designed experiments.