Clinical Social Workers: Lightening the Patient's Burden
Improving Patients' Quality of Life Through Pain Relief
Making New Neurons With Stem Cells
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Al Dorof, Editor
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©2008
HHMI Grant for Undergraduate Education
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded a four-year $1.2 million Undergraduate Science Education Grant to Bryn Mawr College to help fund a host of initiatives. Chief among them are two yearly $5,000 fellowships to help matriculated Bryn Mawr science and math majors complete teaching certificates in secondary education; two postdoctoral fellowships; physical upgrades of classroom and laboratory space; and two scholarships for Science for College, a residential summer program for high-school girls considering careers in science, medicine, and technology.
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Peter D. Brodfuehrer |
"The rigorous requirements for science majors often make it impossible for students interested in careers in education to complete the Bi-College teacher certification during their four undergraduate years. Hopefully this grant will encourage more of our best and brightest students to pursue teaching as a career," says Peter D. Brodfuehrer, professor of biology and program director of Bryn Mawr's grant.
"A lot of our students go directly on to graduate school or into industry, and we haven't done the best job possible of promoting teaching as an option," Brodfuehrer adds. "But science teachers are in very high demand and it's a career that doesn't preclude someone from going on and getting an advanced degree."
The grant started Sept. 1, 2008. Brodfuehrer plans to have the first fellows in place at the start of the 2009 academic year and hopes to have the postdoctoral positions filled by fall 2010. One postdoctoral fellow will be associated with the education program and the other with the mathematics department. Both fellows will work with faculty to help evaluate and shape innovative teaching methods at the college level and examine the efficacy of interdisciplinary approaches to science and math education.
The grant will also help fund the continuation of the Science Horizons Fellowships, which give five Bryn Mawr students the chance to spend the summer conducting laboratory research at off-campus sites, including medical centers, universities, and government facilities. Brodfuehrer hopes to make it easier for students to take the first step toward finding placements by increasing outreach to alumnae working at institutions where placements are possible.
Bryn Mawr College was one of 48 of the nation's best undergraduate institutions that received part of the $60 million HHMI awarded to invigorate science teaching at liberal-arts colleges. HHMI invited 224 colleges with a track record of preparing undergraduate students for research careers to submit proposals. Through a stringent review process, distinguished scientists and educators narrowed the 192 applicants down to 48 winners.
NSF Grant for Graduate Education
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Rhonda Hughes |
The National Science Foundation awarded an additional $1.1 million to support EDGE (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education), a program founded and led by Bryn Mawr Professor of Mathematics Rhonda Hughes and Spelman College Professor of Mathematics Sylvia Bozeman.
EDGE is designed to encourage women, especially those from underrepresented groups, to complete graduate programs in mathematics. Since EDGE's founding in 1998, 105 students have attended the summer workshops that constitute its core program, and 14 of those women have earned Ph.D.s, "with many more in the pipeline," says Hughes. "Good statistics about graduate attrition rates are very hard to come by," she says, "but estimates of the percentage of graduate students who don't complete a graduate degree in mathematics range from 30 to 70 percent." Less than 10 percent of the 105 EDGE students have left graduate school with no degree at all, and many of the rest are well on their way to the Ph.D. finish line, Hughes says.
The new grant, the largest yet made to the program, will fund four more years of summer workshops and several new initiatives—including a nationwide conference at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in October—to spread the news about the successful methods EDGE has developed and offer them as models for mathematics departments around the country.
The EDGE summer workshop helps women make the transition from undergraduate to graduate study. Part of the preparation it offers is mathematical—a series of advanced mathematics courses that are rarely offered at the smaller colleges where many program participants did their undergraduate work.
But what distinguishes EDGE, Hughes says, is the emotional and cultural preparation it gives its students, as well as a structured mentorship program that has proven critical to EDGE students' persistence in Ph.D. programs on numerous occasions. "Many studies have shown that social and intellectual isolation is the main barrier to success in graduate programs for women and underrepresented groups," Hughes explains. "A student who connects with a strong mentor early in her graduate studies is much more likely to earn a degree than one who doesn't. We make sure that mentor is in place, and keep in touch with mentors to monitor our students' progress."
One of the mentors' most important functions is to reassure students of their ability to succeed with difficult material when they are struggling and begin to question themselves. "Negotiating setbacks is an essential skill," Hughes notes. "When EDGE students reach graduate school, they are likely to have peers who have attended large research institutions that gave them the opportunity to take more advanced courses in mathematics than they have had. It is important for them to recognize that knowledge is not the same thing as ability—they may know less than some of their peers, but that doesn't mean they're less bright. They have to be able to persist in that kind of situation."
The summer program helps prepare students, Hughes says, "by introducing some of that anxiety about their performance in a controlled setting, where we can be supportive and encouraging. Once they have made it through difficulties one time, they know they can do it again."
Hail Fellow
On Oct. 11, 2008, Katharine Blodgett Gebbie '54, director of the physics laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Washington, D.C., will be inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. She was one of 211 distinguished scholars worldwide to be elected by the Academy's membership in 2008.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the Academy is one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy-research centers. Its current membership includes some 200 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
"The Academy honors excellence by electing to membership remarkable men and women who have made preeminent contributions to their fields, and to the world," says Academy President Emilio Bizzi. "We are pleased to welcome into the Academy these new members to help advance our founders' goal of 'cherishing knowledge and shaping the future.'"
Gebbie graduated from Bryn Mawr College with an A.B. in physics and subsequently earned a B.S. in astronomy and a Ph.D. in physics from University College, London. She joined NIST in 1968 as a physicist in the quantum physics division of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), a cooperative enterprise of NIST and the University of Colorado, Boulder. Before being appointed director of the physics laboratory in 1991, Gebbie served as chief of the quantum physics division and acting director of the center for atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
Gebbie is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and JILA, and a member of several professional societies, including Sigma Xi and American Women in Science. She has served as vice president of the International Committee on Weights and Measures of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), Sèvres, France, and as president of BIPM's Consultative Committee on Temperature. She has received several prestigious awards, including the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal, the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Washington Academy of Sciences Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Physical Sciences.
Building a Healthier America
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Alice Mitchell Rivlin '52 |
Alice Mitchell Rivlin '52, senior economist and director of the Greater Washington Research Program at the Brookings Institution, was appointed co-chair of the Commission to Build a Healthier America, a new initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with Mark McLellan, director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution and former FDA commissioner and administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The commission will focus on factors outside the health-care system and identify nonmedical, evidence-based strategies to improve the health of all Americans. It will investigate how factors such as education, environment, income, and housing shape and affect personal behavioral choices through an extensive inquiry that will include regional field hearings. The commission's 14 members represent a diverse group of experts with the ability to cross traditional boundaries, mobilize partners to action, and identify practical, timely solutions.
"The health of our people affects the overall health of our economy and our nation. While we must make health care delivery more efficient and broaden access to care, the medical system addresses only some of the factors influencing health," says Rivlin. "That is why I am so committed to the work of this commission. There is more to health than health care."
Rivlin graduate from Bryn Mawr with an A.B. in economics, and earned her Ph.D. at Radcliffe College in 1958. The founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, Rivlin has served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the first Clinton Administration. She has received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, is past president of the American Economic Association, and currently sits on the New York Stock Exchange Board of Directors.