$1.5 Million Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant will change how undergraduate biology and life sciences are taught at VCU

By Anne Buckley

Virginia Commonwealth University is one of six U.S. universities to receive first-time grants from the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute, joining veteran research universities like Harvard, Dartmouth, Stanford and Princeton in a quest to enrich the way undergraduate science is taught.

The Institute today announced $86.4 million in grants to help 50 universities keep up with the rapid evolution of biology and its increasing interaction with other disciplines like chemistry, math and computer science.

VCU plans to use the grant to change the emphasis in undergraduate biology and life sciences education from a traditional, organismal approach to a more integrated “systems biology” approach in which all the molecular interactions in a system – pathway, organelle, cell, organism or ecosystem – are examined to understand function.

The Institute invited 214 research universities that have a proven track record in preparing students for graduate education and careers in research, teaching or medicine to compete for the undergraduate science education awards. It received 158 applications, and a panel composed of leading scientists and educators, including HHMI professors and an HHMI investigator, reviewed the applications.

In addition to the other recipients, HHMI, the nation’s largest private supporter of science education, selected VCU and five other universities that have never before received HHMI undergraduate science education grants: Georgia State University, New Mexico State University, the University of California, Riverside; the University of California, San Francisco; and the University of Florida.

“VCU has long recognized the interdisciplinary impact on biology of other areas of study and took a bold step in furthering the collaborative process with the creation in 2000 of VCU Life Sciences, a university-wide, matrix academic organization that is liberating scientists from their traditional disciplines,” said VCU President Eugene P. Trani. “It is an honor for VCU to be recognized with a grant to further our emphasis on systems biology.”

Thomas Huff, vice provost for VCU Life Sciences, said the grant complements an already rich and comprehensive effort at VCU in the area of systems biology.

“Through VCU Life Sciences, VCU has one of the most comprehensive K-12 to faculty research programs in systems biology in the United States,” he said.

Huff points to several VCU initiatives that demonstrate the university’s commitment to such an approach, including the Virginia Governor's School for Life Sciences and Medicine for gifted high school students; Life Sciences 101, VCU’s nationally touted introduction to systems biology for beginning college students; VCU’s bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in bioinformatics, which provide the 'glue' that makes systems approaches possible in biology; and the Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences, a 340-acre living laboratory on the James River.

Gregory Buck, Ph.D., director of The Center for the Study of Biological Complexity, the comprehensive systems biology institute at VCU Life Sciences, said the goal of the four-year project is to “replace traditional ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ practices of teaching biology with comprehensive systems approaches that integrate mathematics and information technology to interpret and model life processes.”

Buck, principal investigator on the HHMI grant, and Len Smock, Ph.D., chair of VCU’s Department of Biology and co-principal investigator, plan a four-stage approach to implement the change, which calls for training faculty to teach systems biology; creating a comprehensive systems biology curriculum; creating an intensive, research-based and highly interdisciplinary residential HHMI Summer Scholars Program for undergraduate life sciences majors at VCU; and providing in-depth exposure to diversified extramural systems biology based research environments at regional academic and commercial institutions.

A nonprofit medical research organization, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute was established in 1953 by the aviator-industrialist. The Institute, based in Chevy Chase, Md., is one of the largest philanthropies in the world, with an endowment of $14.8 billion at the close of its 2005 fiscal year. HHMI spent $483 million in support of biomedical research and $80 million for support of a variety of science education and other grants programs in fiscal 2005.