Keck-phase-1-summary

1. Abstract [150 words]:

Provide an executive summary of the project, including overall goal, methodology and significance, for a lay audience.

Earlham College requests $a-bucket-of-money to develop multidisciplinary science curriculum modules and student/faculty research projects focusing on a common core problem: metals in the environment. This project will emphasize collaboration among our natural science departments, including biology, chemistry, computer science, geosciences, mathematics, and environmental science. Scientific research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary, collaborative, and computational; therefore, it is essential to train our students to develop multi-faceted approaches, which use both traditional laboratory techniques and computational methods, to problem solving. This project will introduce an important scientific problem, metals in the environment, ask students to collect and analyze data, and to make interpretations using different disciplinary perspectives in both coursework and independent research projects with faculty. We believe this idea of collaborative multidisciplinary learning will transform our undergraduate curriculum in the sciences and provide a model for programs among the sciences at other liberal arts colleges.

2. Unique Aspects:

Describe unique or distinctive aspects of this project.

Four aspects of our project work together to make it powerful and unique: 1) our focus on local problems; 2) the combined use of field, laboratory, and computational methods; 3) the longitudinal involvement of students as they take introductory through upper-level science classes; and 4) showing students how modern science is multidisciplinary with teams of scientists who inform and illuminate the different disciplinary perspectives of a problem.

This project will bridge the gap between modern scientific research and science education by incorporating research modules into courses and further developing multidisciplinary summer research activity. These research modules will be integrated into courses beginning with the introductory courses in chemistry, biology, geosciences, statistics, and computer science and will become increasingly complex in upper level courses in these disciples. Both course modules and summer research projects will focus on a problem of local concern and include laboratory, field, and computational modeling components.

3. Key Personnel:

Name the key personnel, and describe their credentials, role in the proposed project, and any collaborations/partnerships.

• Chemistry
  • Michael Deibel (Associate Professor of Chemistry, Ph.D. in Radioanalytical Chemistry, University of Kentucky, The Evaluation of Trace Elements Related to the Oxidative Damage Hypothesis of Alzheimer’s Disease) has been teaching for ten years. He has 13 publication (6 related to metal analysis) and has expertise in multiple methods of metal analysis (ICP-AES, GFAAS, FAAS, NAA). As part of this project, Dr. M. Deibel will help develop course modules for environmental chemistry and instrumental analysis. In addition, he will conduct independent research with students to analyze water, soil and biological samples for various metals. Currently, he is collaborating with Dr. Gary Van Berkel (ORNL) on the analysis of compounds in herbal extracts.
  • Corinne Deibel (Associate Professor of chemistry, Ph.D. Radioanalytical Chemistry, University of Kentucky, 1995). Dr. Deibel will be incorporating the newly designed teaching modules in general and analytical chemistry. She has been supervising Undergraduate Research projects in analytical chemistry since 1998.

• Geosciences
  • Ron Parker
  • Meg Streepey (Assistant Professor of Geosciences, Ph.D. University of Michigan, 2001). Dr. Streepey will be creating and implementing teaching modules in introductory geoscience courses and working on the integration of those modules. She has previous experience working as an interdisciplinary curriculum developer at the undergraduate level.

Biology

• • David Matlack
  • John Iverson (Professor of Biology, Ph.D. Zoology, University of Florida, 1977).

• Computer Science
  • Charlie Peck

Other science faculty: Lori Watson (chem), Mark Stocksdale (chem), Mic Jackson (math)(?), Meg Streepy (geology), which represents n% of the science faculty.

For examples of how we collaborate see URL. Merck, HHMI.

=4. Budget:= Describe how funds requested from WMKF will be allocated among capital, personnel and equipment. Percentage for each area.

Justify a boat load of cash.

=5. Justification for WMKF support:= Explain why support from the W. M. Keck Foundation is essential for this project.

The W.M. Keck Foundation is known and respected throughout the scientific community as a Foundation that supports innovative science programs at high-quality undergraduate institutions. A WMK grant would provide the start-up funds that would allow Earlham to launch its multidisciplinary science project. Keck support for Earlham's proposed multidisciplinary program would raise the visibility of the sciences at Earlham within the College and also nationally. In addition, we believe that WMK support would help Earlham garner major gifts from alumni, and forge additional corporate and foundation partnerships for future, sustained funding.