What is HHMI?
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
Through its grants to individuals and institutions, The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) supports the efforts of scientists and educators, colleges and universities, museums, and biomedical research organizations. These grants are transforming the ways research is conducted and science is taught and understood.
The largest privately funded education initiative of its kind in the United States, HHMI's grants program is enhancing science education for students at all levels, from the earliest grades through advanced training. Since 1988 HHMI has awarded approximately $1.5 billion in grants.
Grants awarded by HHMI fit within two general categories: research grants for individuals and science education grants for institutions. Most HHMI grants are awarded through competitions that have specific objectives and eligibility criteria; thus, HHMI does not encourage and rarely funds unsolicited grant proposals.As part of the college's efforts to give students a taste of how science is done in the real world, all Colby science students will be hearing a lot about statistics and interdisciplinary perspectives. The HHMI grant will speed faculty retraining and a curriculum overhaul that will bring statistical concepts into virtually every biology class, from neuroscience to genetics. Outside the biology department, computer science majors will find themselves wrestling with problems drawn from molecular biology and genomics. In addition, Colby will broaden its faculty expertise by hiring two postdoctoral fellows with recent cross-disciplinary training in computer science and biology. Other HHMI-funded programs will hone the leadership skills of women science faculty and underwrite the mentoring of future science department chairs at Colby.
A small college of 1,800 in a small town of just 15,600, Colby has always had a close relationship with the local public schools. The HHMI grant will make that relationship even closer, supporting more "scientists in the classroom" units, loaning more lab equipment, giving more small grants directly to science teachers, and hiring more high school students as summer research assistants.
A special outreach target for Colby science students will be the 4th and 5th graders at Waterville's Hall School. Research by Colby education faculty has identified this age group as the time boys lose interest in school and girls lose interest in science, says Tilden, who confesses to a vested interest in the outcome. "I have a fifth grader of my own."
HHMI awarded Colby College grants of $1 million in 1991, $1 million in 1996, $800,000 in 2000, and $1 million in 2008 for combined total funding of $3.8 million through the undergraduate program. The 2008 grant supports the following programs:
Student Research and Broadening Access to Science
A research-intensive summer bridge and first year program, the Colby Achievement Program in the Sciences (CAPS) designed for underrepresented and first-generation college students to ensure success in gateway chemistry and biology courses, support science majors, and encourgae graduate study.
Curriculum, Equipment, and Laboratory Development
Interdisciplinary faculty grants to incorporate molecular, genomics, and bioinformatics techniques into biology and computer science curricula; and creation of a new minor in computer science for science majors.
Faculty Development
Workshops to cultivate leadership skills for women science faculty; peer-mentoring for future department chairs; and mentoring a teaching-research postdoctoral fellow in computer science.
Precollege and Other Outreach Programs
Faculty- and undergraduate-led in-class units; an undergraduate-mentored science after-school program; field trips to Colby labs for fifth graders; workshops for fourth and fifth grade teachers; and summer research assistantships for high school students.
