Georgetown University received a $2.2 million grant in July from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to help create and execute several academic programs related to the study of biology and biomedical science, including an outreach program for middle and high school students in Washington, D.C. The organization has given previous grants to Georgetown of $1 million in 1992 and $1.2 million in 1998.
Georgetown biology professor Joseph Neale will oversee several education initiatives to be funded with the grant. Neale said Georgetown’s strong reputation for undergraduate science, the success of its research-intensive curriculum for biology majors and its proven success in community outreach were the motivating factors behind the donation of the grant. The grant will fund a program for undergraduate biology majors interested in careers in biomedical research. With this new grant, Neale plans to continue this program and expand it to include an advanced program in teaching for undergraduate biology majors interested in teaching science at any level.
Money from the grant will also support the Hughes Pre-College Scholars program, which gives substantial academic support – over six years – to potentially at-risk secondary school students in the District who have an interest in pursuing higher education. The program allows middle school students with an interest in going to college to attend weekly classes at Georgetown until he or she graduates from high school. “One hundred percent of students who have finished all six years of the program have graduated from high school and have gone on the college,” Neale said. “Less than 50 percent of their middle school peer group in the D.C. school system graduate from high school, and only a fraction of these go on to college.”
Thomas Bullock, associate director of the Center for Minority Educational Affairs, has directed the outreach initiative for the last seven years. He hopes the program’s success will help other universities create similar initiatives.
The grant will also fund a program through Georgetown that will help middle school math teachers better instruct their students. The idea for this program stems from recent studies indicating that a good foundation in algebra during middle school greatly increases a child’s future chances for success in school. Additionally, middle school math teachers in D.C. and elsewhere do not need a certification to teach math – they may simply be assigned to teach a math class with little preparation.
Dr. Jim Sandefur, a Georgetown math professor, will act as an advisor for the program. Neale says that he hopes this program will also serve as a model for improving the facility of middle school teachers for instruction in pre-algebra and algebra.
The Hughes Institute has given out a total of $80 million to 44 research universities this year to promote undergraduate biology education.
