Eleven Schools Win Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program Awards

ST. LOUIS — Eleven colleges and universities across the United States are winners of the 2006 awards for the Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program, sponsored by the Merck Institute for Science Education and AAAS. Each award provides up to $60,000, paid over three years at $20,000 per year, for joint use by the biology and chemistry departments at each recipient institution.

This year’s winners are Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C.; Drew University, Madison, N.J.; Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Ore.; Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles; Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn.; Simmons College, Boston; State University of New York, Brockport; State University of New York, Oswego; Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa.; Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas; and University of Illinois, Springfield.

The Undergraduate Science Research Program is a national competitive awards program available in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Up to 15 awards are made annually. The funding supports research stipends for undergraduate students and ancillary programs that foster interactions between the biology and chemistry departments. Launched in 2000 as a national competition, awards will be made through 2009. This 10-year, $9 million initiative is funded by the Merck Institute for Science Education and administered by AAAS. Its goals are to:

• enhance undergraduate education through research experiences that emphasize the interrelationship between chemistry and biology;
• encourage students to pursue graduate education in chemistry and life sciences; and
• foster undergraduate programs and activities that bridge chemistry and biology.

Read All About It! For more AAAS news from the 2006 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Mo., click here.

The program is open to qualified institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico that offer an American Chemical Society-approved program in chemistry and confer 10 or fewer graduate degrees annually in biology and chemistry combined.

The Merck Institute for Science Education (MISE) is a tax-exempt private foundation established in 1993 to improve science education in the public schools. Now expanded to include college and graduate-level education, MISE works to build capacity in the biomedical sciences through partnerships with education institutions.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society; it serves 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, reaching 10 million individuals. It also publishes the journal Science, which has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world and an estimated total readership of 1 million.

The winners of this program are being announced during the 2006 AAAS Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Mo. For more information, send questions via merck@aaas.org or click here.

16 February 2006