FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded $1.5 million to scientists in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas to implement a program that will draw more minorities, women and those students who might not consider careers in science into studies in the sciences.

Donald Bobbitt, Dean of Fulbright College

Greg Salamo, Distinguished Professor of Physics

Roger Koeppe, University Professor of Chemistry

Ralph Henry, Professor of Biological Sciences

David Paul, Associate Professor in Chemistry

A 2006 report by the National Science Foundation revealed that only about one-third of U.S. students in the fourth and eighth grades and less than one-fifth of 12^th graders were proficient in math and science tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Scores for underrepresented minorities were significantly lower.

The proposal by principal investigator Donald Bobbitt, dean of Fulbright College - and co-principals Greg Salamo, Distinguished Professor of physics, Roger Koeppe, University Professor of chemistry, Ralph Henry, a professor of biological sciences, and David Paul, an associate professor of chemistry — was one of 50 four-year grants totaling $86.4 million awarded by the Institute for 2006. With these awards, the Institute has provided nearly $693 million to support undergraduate science education at 247 universities and colleges in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. This latest Institute grant is the largest ever awarded in Arkansas.

“The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is the nation’s largest non-government funding source of science education programs and is known for supporting only the most promising and innovative programs,” said Chancellor John A. White. “I am proud of our faculty for competing and winning such a prestigious grant and placing the University of Arkansas in the company of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Duke and Carnegie Mellon, among others.”

The faculty members plan to create specialized teams, pairing up six to 10 students with researchers who will combine their expertise in physics, chemistry and biological sciences to study scientific problems from various perspectives.

“They will spend two years together, working on projects both independently and as teams. The goal is to help them gain a deeper understanding of the process of discovery and be motivated to consider careers in science,” said Bobbitt.

Many of these students, previously unsure of themselves in the sciences, will discover that research is not a solitary process in which scientists work alone in laboratories, but rather a multidisciplinary endeavor whose most promising new discoveries often depend on collaboration and cooperation.

For example, if students were studying the way DNA controls function in a cell, they could benefit from the insights of biology into the importance of how molecules move in and out of cells. Physicists would be able to use the glow of quantum dots to identify exactly where in the cell a specific molecule is located. Chemists could demonstrate that this outcome could be used to design a better enzyme or enzyme inhibitor, in turn leading to the possibility of a more effective antibiotic against disease.

“Research in biology has brought us the possibility of directly observing and understanding many physical processes such as transport, structure and interaction within a cell,” said Salamo. “Meanwhile, research in the physical sciences has focused rather intensely on similar intimate physical features in nanostructures and led us to wonder if newly discovered rules that describe the growth and behavior of nanostructures are at play in a cell. It is the intersection of these two disciplines that allows us to understand the amazing physical processes in a cell. In our vision we see the right tools and cross-disciplinary mix of talented faculty bridging the physical and biological sciences to train new generations of students and awaken in them a lifelong interest in science.”

Bobbitt said the earliest this new approach to teaching science could be implemented would be fall 2006, but more likely, the program will begin in the spring of 2007.

“Our main purpose, really, is to fundamentally change the way science is taught and to attract more women and underrepresented groups into the field,” he said.

The University of Arkansas won a Hughes grant of $1 million in 1994, awarded to now emeritus professor Arnold Kaplan of biological sciences.