Rice Receives $1.6 Million Hughes Medical Grant

Contact: Michael Cinelli
Phone: (713) 831-4794

Rice Receives $1.6 Million Hughes Medical Grant

Rice University received a $1.6 million grant
from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for its Undergraduate
Biological Sciences Education Program that will affect all levels of
education in Texas.

"As part of the program, novel efforts at attracting and
retaining women and minority students in science will be undertaken,
and undergraduate laboratory courses will be expanded and upgraded,"
said Fred Rudolph, director of the program and executive director of
the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering at Rice.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute awarded $86 million in four-year grants to 62 research and doctorate-granting universities this
year. The grants expand an initiative that has already begun to
change the face of science education at college campuses and at K-12
schools nationwide, institute officials said.

Since 1988, the institute has awarded $290 million to colleges
and universities through its Undergraduate Biological Sciences
Education Program. These grants have enabled universities to provide
research opportunities for more than 15,000 undergraduates, to reach
out to nearly 5,000 science teachers and students at local schools,
and to attract more women and minorities to science.

At Rice, outreach programs under a previous Hughes Medical
Institute grant have been successful. Several will continue to be
funded. A number of new opportunities have developed for
partnerships with several schools, including The Rice School/La
Escuela Rice-a new K-8 facility in the Houston Independent School
District.

The outreach effort aimed at elementary and secondary schools
will help develop new, integrated and comprehensive science and
mathematics curricula, "and will attempt to generate in the students
a sense of enthusiasm for science," Rudolph said.

The four-year grant will provide $800,000 for off-campus
activities, $700,000 for on-campus programs and $100,000 for
administrative costs. The grant will support the following:

* a teacher resource center; curriculum reform and program
development for local primary and secondary schools, high schools in
the South Texas Independent School District in Mercedes, Texas, and
the United Independent School District in Laredo; a science camp and
other programs for middle school girls; and enhancement of an honors
premedical curriculum;

* undergraduate programs, to include recruitment and retention
of underrepresented minorities, seminars, faculty mentoring, and
research for women and underrepresented minorities;

* equipment and upgrades for expanded laboratory modules in
biological sciences, and educational technology for areas such as
structural biology and biophysics.

On the administrative front, the grant will fund two new
positions to work in off-campus programs-a curriculum coordinator
and a networking coordinator. The curriculum coordinator will
oversee program development at all sites. The networking coordinator
will work to facilitate communication capabilities in the schools.

"If we can get students turned on early to science, then we have
an opportunity to increase the numbers-particularly of
underrepresented minorities and women-in science as well as to have
a scientifically literate public," Rudolph said.

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.
It has an undergraduate student population of 2,572, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,375 and a full-time faculty of
448.

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