BY STUART WOLPERT
UCLA Today
UCLA, a national leader in incorporating research into the undergraduate
curriculum, has received national recognition for its success.
The campus was one of the first universities to be honored by
the National Science Foundation for merging research with undergraduate
education.
Now three grants from the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) will enable UCLA faculty to
invigorate and enliven undergraduate science education.
“Our goal is to make UCLA
the leading research university in the nation for undergraduate
research,” said Judith L. Smith, vice provost for undergraduate
education for the College of Letters and Science.
Two professors will be creating
innovative programs that relay the excitement of scientific
discovery to undergraduates.
Professors Robert B. Goldberg and
Utpal Banerjee in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental
Biology are among 20 faculty in the nation to be awarded $1-million
HHMI grants each to creatively improve undergraduate science
teaching. UCLA is the only university to have more than one
professor selected for this honor.
Goldberg’s novel program
will teach undergraduates about the process by which science
is conducted, and how advances in biology are rapidly transforming
lives.
“One of my goals,”
Goldberg said, “is to show undergraduates how research
is carried out, how scientists are just like ‘the rest
of us.’ Students will see how much effort, imagination
and creativity go into experimental thought, and how much fun
science is.”
He plans to combine one discussion-rich
course, “Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture
and Law,” with a laboratory experience that will use state-of-the-science
genomic technologies to uncover significant genes. Students
will learn how to think critically about experimental science,
as well as carry out original research.
Under Banerjee, chair of the department,
undergraduates will work in large laboratory courses in close
cooperation with his lab, where his team studies the nature
of cell-cell communication in Drosophila, the fruit fly.
“How does one cell talk to
another, and how does it lead a cell to take on a certain fate?”
Banerjee asked. “How does it know what it is to become?
Cells must have some way of deciding who is going to do what.
In order for them to take on a specific fate, they must rely
on signals they get from their neighbors. Those signals have
a molecular basis.”
Undergraduate teaching in the sciences
will also benefit from a $2-million grant from HHMI.
Dean Fred Eiserling of Life Sciences, who also directs UCLA’s
Undergraduate Biological Sciences Education Program, said the
grant will expand programs for undergraduates preparing to become
science teachers in Los Angeles schools, broaden an innovative
online writing program and support outstanding Howard Hughes
Undergraduate Researchers. It will also enable UCLA to expand
outreach programs that improve the science preparation of students
in urban public schools.
Among the undergraduate programs
the grant will support:
