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Haverford College gets grant
The $1.7 million award will go toward science
classes, research and minority programs at the school.
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
HAVERFORD TOWNSHIP - Haverford College has received a $1.7 million grant to expand interdisciplinary science classes, student research opportunities, and minority science-education programs.
The four-year grant, announced last week, is the largest of 53 awarded this year by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization in Chevy Chase, Md. It is the third awarded to the college by the institute since 1988, with the three totaling $4.25 million.
Stephen Barkanic, the Hughes senior program officer for undergraduate sciences, said Haverford's interdisciplinary approach to science edcuation appeals to the institute.
"They're doing all the right things in terms of looking ahead to where science is going, and preparing their students for that," Barkanic said.
Philip Meneely, a biology professor at Haverford and the school's Hughes program director, said the grant would bolster several programs already funded by the institute at Haverford.
They include interdisciplinary instruction for Haverford professors, a study of the ethics of scientific advances, an outreach program that enables inner-city high school teachers and students to do laboratory research with Haverford students and faculty, and a summer scholarship program for Haverford science students.
The key to all of the programs, Meneely said, is breaking down the traditional walls between different scientific disciplines.
That approach appealed to Navid Sadri, 21, a senior who is spending his second summer in the lab at Haverford as a Hughes scholar.
Sadri is working with a biologist, a chemist and a physicist, studying the electrical properties of DNA. His research may have applications in creating ever-smaller computer chips.
"It's really opened my eyes to the whole concept of how science really works," Sadri said. "It's not just one biologist, or one chemist."
Barkanic called Haverford's curriculum "prescient."
"This is going to be a model of what other schools will look at in terms of how to teach science in the future," Barkanic said.
Six Pennsylvania schools won grants from the institute
this year, the most of any state. Besides Haverford, they
are Swarthmore ($700,000), Dickinson ($900,000), Ursinus
($800,000), Washington and Jefferson ($700,000), and
Franklin and Marshall ($700,000).
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