David Williams, faculty director for the Stable Isotope Facility and a member of the Science Initiative Leadership Team, says undergraduate research will help attract top students to UW.
The Science Initiative includes several programs to promote research, starting with undergraduates. “The Wyoming Research Scholars Program is our effort to bring a hands-on research experience to qualified students,” says David Williams, head of the Department of Botany. “We believe the skills they will learn can take their fundamental education to the next level and make them competitive internationally for the next stage in their life.”
Applicants must be science majors, and scholars will be chosen from a wide spectrum—from top students, to transfer students, to students with the potential for growth. Once fully implemented, the program will fund 25 students in each year of school for a total of 100 students at any given time. Students will be paired with faculty mentors who can model the scholarship, teaching, service and outreach activities of a professional scientist. Stipends will include funds to enable students to work in labs and to attend and present their work at conferences. The program cohort will participate in a one-credit seminar class each year to learn about scientific process, ethics, public speaking and writing. Junior and senior students will also collaborate with the Science Initiative Ph.D. fellows and faculty mentors in research and spend one semester as a peer instructor in active-learning classrooms.
“I think it will help keep the best students in Wyoming and also attract top students from around the region because they see these great opportunities,” says Williams, adding that his undergraduate experience was key for him going on to graduate school. “The marketplace is getting much more competitive, and students graduating with a four-year degree need to show more than just coursework.”
In order to attract more highquality graduate students to UW, the Science Initiative includes the Ph.D. Fellowship Program.
“Successful Ph.D. students bring a lot to a university,” says botany and molecular biology Professor Cynthia Weinig. “They contribute to ongoing research and develop novel research avenues themselves, and they contribute to the vibrancy of the educational experience for our undergraduates.”
“My doctoral students play a huge role in my research,” says Jing Zhou, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry. “They are the driving force.”
Once fully implemented, the Ph.D. Fellowship Program will provide funding for 20 prestigious Ph.D. fellowships within the core five science departments. These fellows will undergo training and demonstrate competency in outreach, as well as perform one semester of active learning classroom teaching and/or undergraduate research mentorship via the Wyoming Research Scholars Program, in addition to performing doctoral research.
Fellowships will be awarded on a competitive basis to the most outstanding graduate applicants and will last for up to five years with stipends competitive with highly selective nationwide fellowships awarded through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. This competitive package, along with UW’s new planned facilities, will help attract top graduate students. The program also aims to increase the number and quality of Ph.D. students graduating from UW to bring programs to top-quartile status; to train the next generations of leading scientists with skills to address challenging and relevant interdisciplinary problems, and to pursue successful careers and conduct effective outreach; to stimulate an increase in successful research grant proposals from interdisciplinary researchers; and to reduce average time-to-degree for a UW Ph.D.
The Science Initiative’s Competitive Research Innovation Program (CRIP) aims to elevate STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—research at UW by providing infrastructure and increasing grant funding for principal investigator-initiated research projects.
These days, hiring top-tier faculty members in the sciences requires providing those researchers with significant startup funding. The CRIP program will provide funds to supplement available startup funding in the five core sciences. In addition, major pieces of equipment required for modern-day scientific research can cost $500,000 to $1 million and have a lifespan of eight to 12 years. CRIP will provide additional funds to help replace instruments that have reached the end of their functional lives.
“Since I’ve been chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology, we’ve hired four faculty members,” says Associate Professor Mark Stayton. “We’ve had multiple candidates turn us down in this process. We had one failed search, and it was because there wasn’t the right instrumentation on campus. The Science Initiative offers us a way to cover part of the needed startup costs for new hires and therefore make us competitive for these elite new faculty members.”
Another major aspect of the CRIP program is seed grants—one to two years of funding at $30,000–$60,000 in order to allow faculty to jumpstart new or innovative research streams that are not yet mature enough to win extramural funding. Recipients will be expected to submit competitive full multiyear proposals to the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health or similar federal agencies within two years of receiving seed grants.
“CRIP helps encourage competitive proposals from faculty members with seed funding,” Stayton says. This funding is all the more important given the increasingly competitive nature of federal funding, he adds. “We’re going to enable faculty members to get the preliminary data they need for a grant.”
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