The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded 20 four-year grants of $1 million to academic researchers for finding innovative ways to bring the culture of science to undergraduates. Unlike many science education grants, the 'HHMI Professors' program is intended to target both beginning science students and science phobics.

"People aren't learning how science is done or how scientists think, and that is important no matter what career they end up in," said Graham Hatfull, Eberly Family Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the 20 new Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professors.

HHMI, the largest funding source for US biomedical science after the federal government, appointed a panel of researchers and educators to select award recipients from 150 candidates recommended by 85 research-oriented universities. Awardees were chosen based on their creativity in finding new teaching tools and opportunities to expose students to the reality of research, according to HHMI.

Award recipient Ron Hoy, a Cornell University professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, is developing a DVD of insect behavioral mutants that can be used in lab and lectures. "It's one thing to talk about behavior; it's another to show it," he explained. Students who dissect the behaviors may also make new discoveries, he added. "The line between doing a lab exercise and doing research blurs."

Hilary Godwin, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Northwestern University, will emphasize an interdisciplinary approach in her HHMI-funded teaching project. Prompted by the small number of minority students taking freshman chemistry, she will bring students prior to beginning their first academic year to participate in her research on lead contamination in Chicago neighborhoods, involving analytical chemistry, fieldwork, and larger issues. "Lead poisoning disproportionately affects African Americans and Hispanics, the same minority groups we are targeting with this summer program," she said.

The new HHMI Professors cite fond memories of research experiences that propelled them into science, an opportunity usually restricted to science majors, as their own inspiration to devise new teaching methods. HHMI officials acknowledge their intent to inspire change in the minds of scientists as well.

The teaching of undergraduates tends to be undervalued at research universities, according to Peter Bruns, vice president for grants and special programs at HHMI. "By rewarding great teaching and supporting a synergistic interaction between research and undergraduate education, we hope to sow seeds of a fundamental change in the culture of research universities," Bruns said Wednesday, in a statement accompanying the award announcement.

He told The Scientist, "Why a million dollars? Because the program is of such fundamental importance that we wanted it to have an impact."