Beckman Scholars Program
Rebeccah Lijek '07 Molecular Biology Workshop, Univ of Ghana
Haverford College has been awarded funding from the Beckman Foundation to continue the Beckman Scholars program at Haverford College for 2008-2011. Up to four scholars will be selected during this period.
Requirements
The requirements of the program are as follows: two summers of full-time research in a lab(and participation in research at Haverford [i.e. not abroad] for both semesters next academic year (2009-2010).
Summary of 2009 Program:
Amount of Award: approximately $18,000, including summer research stipends, $4,000 scholarship, and allowances for travel and research materials. Funding is from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
Who is eligible: Haverford College Sophomores and Juniors who are Biology or Chemistry majors, or students from other majors (including Physics, Mathematics and Psychology) with interdisciplinary interests involving the Chemical or Biological Sciences. The Beckman Foundation requires that Beckman Scholars be citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its possessions.
Selection criteria: Academic course performance, communication skills, and seriousness of interest in scientific research will all be considered by the selection committee.
Required commitment: Ten weeks of research at Haverford College for each of two summers (2009 and 2010) and two semesters of research tutorial courses (on-campus) during the 2009-2010 academic year.
Application deadline: 5 p.m. on Thursday, February 5, 2009. An on-line application form is at the bottom of this page. If you are also applying for an HHMI, interdisciplinary fellowship, you should indicate that, you are also applying for the Beckman Scholarship, in that application.
Some history of the program and previous recipients from Haverford College:
Emily Hinchcliff '08 and mentor Jenni Punt at the 07 Beckman scholars conference
The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation has awarded Haverford College a grant to designate and fund three or four students as "Beckman Scholars" over the next two or three summers and academic years. This is our third institutional award from the Beckman Foundation; we previously had Beckman Scholars programs for the 1999-2001, 2002-2004, and 2005-2008 academic years.
The Beckman Scholars Program was established in 1998 and is a prestigious national scholarship offered at roughly 35 academically-rigorous colleges and universities to recognize exceptional students with an interest in the chemical and biological sciences. To date, nine outstanding Haverford College students have been designated as Beckman Scholars.
- Alexander Au (class of 2000) worked with Professor of Biology Judy Owen to examine regulation of B lymphocyte apoptosis as a function of cell division.
- Katie Connell (class of 2001) worked with Associate Professor of Chemistry Karin Åkerfeldt to study the domain organization of calbindin D28k, a unique EF-hand protein.
- Shelli Frey (class of 2001) studied the interaction between porphyrins and DNA by resonance Raman spectroscopy in the laboratory of Professor of Chemistry Julio de Paula.
- Brooks Bond-Watts (class of 2004) studied the photoconductivity of porphyrin-based nanorods in Professor de Paula's laboratory.
- Sam Edmondson (class of 2003) studied cell signaling processes with Associate Professor of Biology Jennifer Punt.
- Christen Fornadel (class of 2004) also studied cell signaling processes with Professor Punt.
- Katie Hart (class of 2004) was mentored by Associate Professor of Biology Rob Fairman in her project to develop peptide-based conducting nanowires.
- Melanie Smith (class of 2006) studied formation of amyloid fibers using a peptide model system in the laboratory of Professor Fairman.
- Rebeccah Lijek (class of 2007), was mentored by Assistant Professor of Biology Iruka Okeke, and studied the emergence of antibiotic resistance in enterobacteria from Nigeria.
- Emily Hinchcliff (class of 2008)(worked in Professored with Jenni Punt’s lab) researching Cytoskeletal Polarization in Mature and Immature T-cells.”
- Alexander Tuttle (class of 2008) was mentored by Professor Wendy Sternberg and studied Social Modulation of Pain in Mice.
- Brian Pepe-Mooney (class of 2010) will be “Using the Coiled Coil Protein Motif to Design Photoelectronically Conductive Regulated Filaments and Fibers” with mentor Professor Rob Fairman.
The Beckman Scholars Program granted these students creative freedom and mentored guidance to pursue their research interests with an intensity they could not otherwise have enjoyed. Several of the Beckman Scholars have, with support from their mentors, supplemented their significant research experiences with important contributions to education of other students. Sam Edmondson helped design and teach a course on signal transduction, Christen Fornadel and Katie Hart both used Beckman Scholar travel funds to support their contributions to the “Biography of an Experiment” project, and Brooks Bond-Watts helped design and teach a summer workshop on nanoscience for high school students and teachers. Rebeccah Lijek co-taught a molecular biology workshop at the University of Ghana.
Program Description for 2009-2010 Beckman Scholars at Haverford College
Sam Edmonson '03
The Beckman Scholars Program at Haverford College allows us to reward exceptional students who have demonstrated both interest and promise in careers in the chemical, biological and/or medical sciences. Our program is designed to enrich these students' scientific experience outside the classroom by giving them enhanced opportunities to engage in intensive, original research. Scholar and mentor together craft a curriculum and research plan that encompasses more than one and, in some cases, two full years at Haverford. The program offers the student prestige and the unique benefits of a long-term, intensive research collaboration with a faculty member.
All scholars will be required to engage in at least ten weeks of research under the guidance of the mentor for two consecutive summers (2009 and 2010). They will also be expected to enroll in a research tutorial course at Haverford for both semesters of the 2009-2010 (junior or senior) year in which they will spend 10-20 hours/week in the laboratory performing independent original research. They will be paid for their research efforts during the two summers and will receive a tuition stipend and research and travel funds for the academic year they are designated as Beckman Scholar. The research will be undertaken in the chemical and/or biological sciences in laboratories at Haverford College. When appropriate, some part of the research may be carried out at other institutions where mentors have strong collaborative ties. Beckman Scholars and at least one faculty mentor will attend the annual research symposium held each summer at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine, California.
The Beckman Scholars will also be required to participate in a number of programs that are open to all our undergraduate researchers, including our HHMI Scholars and Multi-cultural Scholars. These include an interdisciplinary journal club during the summer where students and faculty co-present current literature to a full audience of Natural Science colleagues, a fall poster session where all students performing summer research present their work to faculty and students at a multi-college symposium, and an academic year bi-weekly journal club where two students from different disciplines co-present a paper to their peers. These opportunities and requirements contribute to a lively scholarly community in the Natural Sciences at Haverford.
Added Incentives:
Stipend: Beckman Scholars will receive substantial scholarship support for the two summers of research and for the academic year. The total award for a 15 month period covered by the scholarship is approximately $18,000. Money for research supplies, travel to a national scientific meeting, and travel to a nationwide gathering of Beckman Scholars is included in the award.
Curricular opportunities: We offer all Beckman Scholars the unique opportunity to propose substitutions for up to two required courses with initiatives that will enhance their skills both as researchers and independent scholars. Departments will have the final say on such substitutions of major requirements, but have previously allowed such substitutions for strong and motivated students. Our recent Scholars took full advantage of this flexibility to develop what has now become a new Division-wide initiative called the “Biography of the Experiment” series. This series was conceived principally by Scholars Katie Hart (’04) and Christen Fornadel (’04) who worked with their mentors to develop a sophisticated web-based pedagogical tool that exposes undergraduates to primary literature and the scientific narrative behind influential experiments. Other Beckman Scholars also took advantage of their unique position to involve themselves in other novel pedagogical initiatives. Sam Edmondson ’03 worked with his mentor to design a new problem-based course in Signal Transduction and was co-recipient of an Innovation in Teaching award. Brooks Bond-Watts ’04 worked with his mentor to develop a new summer workshop for our outreach program with high school teachers. Rebeccah Lijek’07 co-taught a molecular biology workshop at the University of Ghana. We will continue to offer these distinctive opportunities to our Scholars and have our faculty mentors work with the scholars to encourage them to take advantage of the creativity that is essential to inspired research. It is not necessary to have any specific curricular opportunities such as these in mind when applying to the Beckman Scholars program (Stage 1).
Research opportunities: In addition to providing recognition for academic merit and a unique research opportunity, the Beckman Scholar program will allow Scholars to receive the educational advantage of a long-term, intensive collaboration with their faculty mentor, which will encompass career and curricular advising as well. Beckman Scholars will be given the opportunity to enroll in up to four course credits of academic research tutorials (out of 32 courses required for graduation). For rising seniors, this would usually mean double credit research during the senior year; for rising juniors, however, this could mean enrolling in research tutorial courses in the junior as well as the senior year.
Application Procedures
Sophomore and junior Biology and Chemistry majors, and students from other majors with appropriate interdisciplinary interests are encouraged to apply. The application procedure consists of two stages -
- Stage 1) an on-line application and submission of transcripts. (see below).
- Stage 2) written application and interview for those applicants selected as finalists.
Students interested in the Beckman Scholar program should begin by contacting faculty members who they wish to propose as faculty mentors. The initial contact can be brief, but once a student has been selected as a finalist, the student should meet with the proposed faculty mentor to discuss details of the research project and to devise (in consultation with the student's academic advisor) a research-centered program of study for their remaining year(s) at Haverford. In many cases, as discussed above, it will be possible for the student to propose substitutions for courses normally required for the major.
List of Possible Mentors for Beckman Scholars
The list below includes all faculty members previously approved by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation to be mentors to Beckman Scholars. It has been updated to indicate mentors who would be available for to serve as mentors during the 15 month period from summer 2009 to summer 2010 time period. Each prospective mentor was asked to give a one paragraph description of a possible research project for a Beckman Scholar; this list is reproduced below. Please bear in mind that many mentors have several related projects in which a Beckman Scholar could become involved; more information can be found on web pages or by talking to individual faculty members (however, talking with faculty members is not a requirement for the first stage of the application procedure).
Students wishing to do research with a faculty member not listed below should consider the possibility of a collaborative research project involving two faculty members.
Karin Åkerfeldt, Chemistry. Area: bioorganic chemistry (protein structure-function relationship studies). Research tools: computer graphics modeling, organic synthesis and purification methods, solid-phase peptide synthesis, HPLC, and a variety of biophysical instrumentation. Specific areas: properties of calcium-binding proteins of the EF-hand type; light-harvesting porphyrin-modified peptides; peptides as models for ion channel proteins; antagonists of human chorionic gonadotropin.
Rob Fairman , Biology: Application of Protein Design Principles to the Study of Polymerizing Systems: My laboratory uses the coiled coil protein folding motif to design photoelectronically conductive regulated filaments and fibers. This work is done in collaboration with Karin Åkerfeldt (Chemistry) and Walter Smith (Physics). We are also interested in understanding the molecular role of glutamines in protein misfolding for diseases such as Huntington’s.
Casey Londergan, Chemistry: My laboratory applies vibrational spectroscopy, including infrared and Raman spectroscopy, coupled with chemical modification of protein side chains, to understand particularly dynamic peptides and proteins on a site-specific basis. Site-specific virbational spectroscopy can show both solvent and structural distribution and dynamics. The systematic basis for undestanding these experiments is established using de novo designed synthetic peptides. Natural systems of particular interest include enzyme active sites, binding domains of intrinsically disordered proteins, and assembly-mediating sequences of viral proteins.
Rob Manning, Mathematics: My work is split between theoretical research in the calculus of variations, developing conjugate point techniques for determining stability in nonstandard problems such as those involving integrodifferential equilibrium equations, as well as the applications of such methods to problems in elasticity and the flexibility of biopolymers such as DNA or coiled-coil proteins.
Alexander Norquist, Chemistry: The research conducted in my laboratory is focused on the synthesis and structural characterization of new functional materials, specifically organically templated molybdenum oxide compounds that exhibit crystallographic noncentrosymmetry. In order to direct crystallization to noncentrosymmetric space groups, we have focused our attention on three main aspects of this chemistry; inorganic structure control, the function of mineralizing agents and the role of the amine. We use systematic studies, based upon composition space analysis to correlate initial reagent concentrations to structure and connectivity of the inorganic component in the resulting solid. We have found that the inclusion or exclusion of mineralizing agents in the final products is dependent upon both concentration and gel pH, information that has been used to prepare a series of new compounds. The role of the organic amines that are present in each of our compounds is both complex and critically important to both composition and symmetry of the products. We are interested in how the point symmetry and/or chirality of organic amines affects the three-dimensional symmetry of reaction products, how the amine charge and charge density affects the formation of templated polyoxomolybdates, and using chiral amines to synthesize new materials that exhibit symmetry dependent properties such as non-linear optical activity.
Iruka Okeke, Biology: Bacterial genetics: Escherichia coli colonization and antimicrobial resistance: My laboratory is interested in the molecular basis for antimicrobial resistance and pathogenesis in intestinal Escherichia coli. We use classical and emerging techniques in molecular microbiology to study the genetic basis for E. coli strains that are exceptionally adapted to human hosts.
Jennifer Punt, Biology: Our laboratory is interested in the molecular reasoning behind decisions made by developing T lymphocytes in response to T cell receptor (TCR) signals. In particular we are working to determine why immature CD4+CD8+ thymocytes die in response to high affinity TCR engagement and their direct CD4+ or CD8+ mature descendants survive and proliferate in response to the identical signals. Our recent data have led us to propose that developmental differences in phosphatase activity may be at the heart of differences in TCR-mediated cell fate of immature and mature T cells. A Beckman Scholar would develop an original project that involves understanding the developmental regulation of signaling networks that underlie cell fate decisions in T lymphocytes and could adopt computational as well as cell biological and genetic approaches to answer novel questions. They could also engage in several curricular initiatives, including the development of a computational workshop for my signal transduction course, and a teaching module for our Problem Solving in Biology section of the summer science institute.
Walter Smith, Physics: My research group studies the aggregation and photoelectronic properties of self-assembled molecular nanowires, using a variety of scanned probe microscopies, UV/vis spectroscopy, and current-voltage characterization as a function of environment, gate voltage, and temperature.
Wendy Sternberg, Psychology: My research examines the various sources of individual differences in the perception of noxious (painful) stimuli, as measured by behavioral assessments (in both humans and laboratory rodents) and examination of regional neural activity through immunohistochemistry for the neural activity marker, c-fos. A theme running through our work is focused on experiential factors that contribute to variability in pain behavior. We are currently investigating the effects of various models of early noxious stimulation (postoperative pain, local inflammation) as well as the duration of the critical period during which experience affects the development of nocieptive and antinociceptive inhibitory circuitry.