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$1.7 million HHMI grant integrates biology, math

Thursday, June 01, 2006

JOHNSON CITY – A new $1.7 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to East Tennessee State University will enable ETSU to forge ahead with SYMBIOSIS, a special project integrating introductory biology and mathematics.

The nation’s largest private supporter of science education is investing $86.4 million in “bold, innovative science education programs” at 50 research universities in 28 states and the District of Columbia. ETSU is the only public or private institution in Tennessee selected to receive one of these new grants.

HHMI initially invited 214 research universities with proven track records in preparing students for graduate education and careers in research, teaching or medicine to compete for the undergraduate awards. A panel of leading scientists and educators, including HHMI professors and an HHMI investigator, carefully reviewed the resulting 158 grant applications prior to the final selection.

A news release announcing these latest HHMI awards highlights aspects of ETSU’s project along with programs at the following schools: Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.; Montana State University, Bozeman; North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Princeton (N.J.) University; Rice University, Houston, Texas; and University of Maryland, Baltimore.

The Institute notes that the ETSU program “will integrate math and biology – fields in which specialists traditionally work at arm’s length from one another – to encourage students to approach biological questions as research scientists address them. One ambitious goal for the project is to retool the math and biology faculty so that they become literate in each other’s discipline.”

The SYMBIOSIS project at ETSU involves faculty from the departments of Biological Sciences and Mathematics. A three-course sequence at the freshman level integrates introductory biology and math topics in a curriculum “that is inquiry-based, experiential, research driven and equally significant from the perspective of either discipline.”

It specifically attempts to implement suggested alterations in undergraduate biology curricula outlined in BIO 2010 – a report on changes that are needed in the undergraduate and graduate biological sciences, authored by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation and HHMI. BIO 2010 recommends integrating math and biology curricula to better prepare both pre-med and research-oriented students for 21st century careers.

Thus, SYMBIOSIS will prepare ETSU students for upper-level biology and mathematics courses with “Quantitatively Intensive” components, which will further strengthen these students for graduate programs in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Biological Modeling and others.

As HHMI states, individualized mentoring and early research experiences with working scientists are “vital components of a university education” that prepares undergraduates for graduate school and careers in science.

ETSU principal project investigators include Drs. Istvan Karsai, Darrell Moore, Karl Joplin, Jeff Knisley, Edith Seier and Michel Helfgott. Dr. Anant Godbole, chair of Mathematics, and Dr. Hugh Miller, interim chair of Biological Sciences, are project advisers.

Additional institutions receiving HHMI grants include Arizona State; Cal Tech; Carnegie Mellon; Case Western; Clemson; William and Mary; Cornell; Duke; Emory; Georgetown; Georgia State; Harvard; Lehigh; LSU and A & M; MIT; New Mexico State; Oregon State; Stanford; SUNY at Stony Brook; Texas Tech; Arizona; Arkansas; UCLA and UCal-Berkeley, Davis, Riverside, San Diego and San Francisco; Colorado at Boulder; Delaware; Florida; Maryland-College Park; Massachusetts at Amherst; Miami; Michigan-Ann Arbor; Montana; Pittsburgh; Texas at Austin and El Paso; Washington, Seattle; Virginia Commonwealth; Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.; and Yale.

A nonprofit medical research organization, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute was established in 1953 by the aviator-industrialist. One of the largest philanthropies in the world, with an endowment of $14.8 billion at the close of its 2005 fiscal year, HHMI has supported undergraduate science education at the nation’s colleges and universities since 1988.

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