Organized by a sub-committee of the Natural Science Division.
Last updated : Monday, October 04, 2004 at 07:31:00 EST
In 2001, Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science and President Emeritus of Stanford University, gave a speech titled "Science and the Liberal Arts College". In it he discussed the importance of liberal arts colleges to the scientific research community. This quote shined the light, however briefly, on Earlham.
"...To explain why the undergraduates from the Stanfords, Berkeleys, Harvards, and Yales are entering academic doctoral programs in the sciences at a lower rate than those from Swarthmore, Williams, Oberlin, Carleton and Reed - not to forget Kalamazoo, College of Wooster, Earlham, Macalester and the other underendowed star performers - we can't ask only why the latter are doing so well..."
[ Science and the Liberal Arts College, Donald Kennedy, Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, September 2001, page 16 ]
At Earlham College, student-faculty research is an essential part of the science curriculum. Approximately 80% of our science majors carry out research projects or other independent work during their Earlham careers. In addition to training in technical skills, challenging, open ended research projects provide opportunities for students to develop crucial independent thinking and learning skills and to build confidence in their ability to perform scientific research. Ongoing research on campus also fosters an exciting, engaging environment for both students and faculty.
In the 1998 Baccalaureate Origins Report, ranking institutions according to the ratio of Ph.Ds granted to bachelors awarded, Earlham College ranked 21st in the Science and Engineering category among all institutions of higher learning. Earlham ranked 12th among other small undergraduate colleges for overall Science and Engineering, 5th in the Geosciences, and 6th in the Life Sciences.
Our recent success serves as a proof of concept and as the motivation behind our proposal that the College endow a fund to support an ongoing summer research community in the sciences. We view research experience as an integral part of the science curriculum. We encourage all of our science majors to pursue research, either at Earlham, or through summer or off-campus research programs such as NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs or the Oak Ridge Science Semester program. However, with current staffing and funding levels, it is not feasible for us to involve many of our science majors in research projects based at Earlham. The proposed endowed fund would provide a sizable core of students with local research opportunities. We expect the participating departments and programs to include Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Environmental Science, Geology, Mathematics, and Physics.
Earlham has a long history of student-faculty research. One of the first efforts was the Soils Program, organized by Jim Thorpe and David Telfair in 19??. Jim Cope's early efforts? Larry Strong? /* More here, PaulO */
Student-faculty research is currently supported during the academic year by the Ford-Knight program. However, many of the research experiences we would like to give our science majors are best suited to intensive summer work which are augmented by a less focused involvement during the academic year. In recent years, summer research across the sciences has been supported by grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Science Foundation, and on a limited basis by the Ford/Knight program.
We have the beginnings of a multidisciplinary summer research community on the Earlham campus. Over the past four years many natural science faculty members and students were involved in summer research at Earlham: JUST SUMMARIZE THESE NUMBERS?
Given our enthusiasm for student-faculty research, it is perhaps not surprising that we increasingly expect our science faculty to involve students in research. Currently, this expectation is unique to the sciences. This mirrors a national trend in the sciences. The proposed endowed fund would provide a means of supporting faculty in meeting this expectation. It is important to note in passing here that this program is not intended to replace or discourage faculty from seeking external funding for research. Rather, it will "fill in the gaps," enabling faculty members to maintain research programs in the long term. One particularly important existing gap to fill is that of jump-starting the summer research programs of newer faculty.
We anticipate that a regular summer research community will facilitate the development of interdisciplinary collaboration. We see the potential for interdisciplinary research projects and also for collaboration on a smaller scale between groups working on related problems in different fields. By working in a research environment in which students and faculty are in close communication across disciplines, faculty participants will be better able to integrate the research experiences of our students into the regular science curriculum.
Students have the option of living together in campus housing. Participants met regularly to discuss research in progress and students gave final presentations of their work. Some of these presentations were at local, regional, and national meetings. Results from this collaborative summer research have also led to joint student-faculty publications.
[ Put this someplace ] It is also important to be clear that the intent of this program is to enable and encourage faculty to involve more of our students in research rather than to grow faculty publication lists.
Ultimately we envision a program supporting approximately 15 faculty members and 30 students each year. This would require an annual budget of about $321,000 in direct costs:
There would also be indirect costs as a result of increased facilities utilization. Assuming a 4% annual draw, this program could be well supported internally by a $8 million endowed fund. With the recent donation from David and Carolyn Matthews, we currently have a $167,000 start on this fund. We are also exploring the consolidation of many existing, small science research funds into this new structure.
Each of the individual cost components scales roughly as the number of faculty supported, and for the most part can be purchased in those units as well. This could allow us to begin this program, relatively quickly, on a small scale. Doing so would give us the opportunity to learn, adjust, and ultimately develop and fully fund a program of this scale at Earlham. HHMI support for our ongoing summer research projects concluded during Fall, 2004.
We envision a multifaceted approach to funding this program. First, faculty will continue to pursue external funding for their research from such sources as HHMI, Research Corporation, ACS-Petroleum Research Fund, and the NSF. Some sources we think are worth pursuing to build the endowed fund include:
[ Matthews gift, how we are using it, how it fits with this, broad interpretation in terms of number of departments covered. ]
We believe there are enough science faculty committed to working with whomever replaces Ava McKinney and her colleagues to cover this list of possibilities. Recent grant writing workshops, and the creation of Ava's position have been excellent steps toward fostering a culture of grant writing, and fund raising generally, within the Natural Science Division.
Science faculty have begun to discuss the long term implications of interdisciplinary research at Earlham. One item to emerge is the eventual need for new facilities that will integrate our departments to facilitate the continued development of our joint research projects. If Earlham can develop and fund a vibrant program of this type over the next ten years we would have a powerful platform for launching the significant fund raising effort necessary to build these new facilities. [ More on the importance of new facilities, particularly with respect to teaching and interdisciplinary research. ]