A FUTURE SUMMER RESEARCH PROGRAM IN BIOLOGY

Research has revealed that providing authentic research experiences for undergraduates improves their career prospects significantly (Carpi et al., 2017). The generosity of Biology alumni and other donors has allowed the Biology Department to provide a range of research experiences for our students.

Biology is fortunate to have annual research awards for students through donations from the late Drs. Al Borgattti and Ed Sweeney. In addition, and tied directly to this theme of a Summer Research Program, Dr. Kathy Murphy (Biology 1973) has provided funds to ‘kick off’ our embryonic summer research with students in 2017 – these monies continue through an endowed fund. Most recently, Mr. Peter Shearstone (1989) has provided funding in various forms including generous funding over five years for our annual Darwin Festival - https://www.salemstate.edu/darwinfestival

Students that have benefited from summer research include:

Megan Fernandez and Kristen Lewis – worked with Drs. Tess Killpack and Thea Popolizio in modernizing our BIO131 introductory course, to focus more on research and inquiry. Megan is currently Facility Manager - Aquatics Department in the Center for Comparative Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Kristen is an instructor at the Gloucester Biotechnology Academy.

Ellen Acheampong – Summer 2017 – working with Dr. Jason Brown, carried out a genetic screen in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to identify mutants defective in cilia regeneration and transcription of cilia-specific genes. Ellen is currently a Ph.D. student in Immunology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Sarah Stanhope – Summer 2019 – working with Jason Brown, used restriction mapping to determine that a plasmid sent by one of their collaborators was not the expected plasmid and planned a CRISPR-based method to disrupt a gene of interest. Sarah is currently a Ph.D. student in Biochemistry at Purdue University.

Rebecca Shteynberg (2020), Sydney Addorisio (2021) and Kamila de Andrade (2022),working with Dr. Laura Laranjo, contributed to the investigation of FDA-approved drugs and the effects on template-switch mutagenesis in E. coli. Rebecca is currently working towards going to dental school, Sydney is a PhD student at Tufts University, while Kamila graduates in December 2023.

Our aim is to create our own version of the Weiss Summer Research Program in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics at The College of the Holy Cross - holycross.edu/office-science-coordinator/summer-scienceresearch-program

Thanks to Kathy Murphy’s generosity, all the above students received a small stipend, a supply budget, and the faculty mentor received a small stipend too. We hope to begin the program in Summer 2024, running research projects for 8-10 students, with 4 or 5 faculty members. The research will be conducted during the Summer I session (Monday after Commencement until the end of June 2024). Students will apply for a spot on the program during the Fall 2023 semester. If they are successful, they will conduct the research in Summer 2024, then write up their project in the Fall 2024 semester. It is envisaged that the 6-week summer program will allow time for the students to take a course or two, to hear invited speakers and alumni, and the summer program will end with a short symposium.

The funding of this program will be covered by grants and, hopefully, donors. Ideally, we would have an endowed fund that could be drawn on each year, augmented by grant funding, allowing the program to continue into the future. We estimate that to get the program going in the Summer of 2024, we would need the following funding:

Stipends for students - $3,000 per student – assuming 8 students - $24,000 Stipends for faculty - $3,000 per faculty member to cover guiding 1 or 2 students – say four faculty, $12,000.

Research supplies - $8,000

TOTAL $44,000

References

Carpi. A., D.M. Ronan, H.M. Falconer & M.H. Lents. 2017. Cultivating Minority Scientists: Undergraduate Research Increases Self-Efficacy and Career Ambitions for Underrepresented Students in STEM. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 54(2): 169-194.

Ryan Fisher July 2023