Julian F. Tyson - US grants

This project involves major changes in the laboratory component of three undergraduate analytical chemistry courses (the one-semester courses in quantitative and instrumental analysis for chemistry majors, and the one-semester course in analytical chemise for non-chemistry majors). These changes are part of larger curricular reform in the Chemistry Department. The changes include (a) the introduction of a role-based cooperative learning approach to much of the work and (b) the development and implementation of problem-based work of industrial relevance. The goal of these revisions is to redress the various short-comings in the education of BS chemists recently highlighted by the NSF and others. The new laboratory content gives more emphasis to spectroscopy and chromatography. The following new techniques are introduced: microwave assisted digestions and extractions, ion chromatography, solid phase microextraction, automatic coulometric Karl-Fisher titrimetry, and FT-IR microscopy. The acquisition of a capillary chromatograph with electron capture detection and a commercial integrated flow injection unit provides upgrades in the areas of gas chromatography and flow injection analysis, respectively. The approach to the teaching of some general principles of instruments, and of molecular absorption spectrometry in particular, is based on an integrated approach which starts with modeling and progresses though the construction of modular instruments to the evaluation of commercial instruments. Experiments on data handling and processing are included. An Industrial Advisory Board provides help in devising much of the experimental work, including the problem-based experiments. A web site has been established as part of the new teaching materials and information will be disseminated through educational conferences and journals.

Professor Julian Tyson of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Dr. Gerhard Schlemmer of Perkin-Elmer Corporation are funded by the Analytical and Surface Chemistry program and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities for collaborative research on trace analysis involving instrumentation. This Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) grant addresses trace element uptake by marine plankton, the fate of arsenic in soils, the anti-cancer properties of selenium-enriched yeast, the uptake of trace elements by marine organisms, the fingerprinting of lead, copper, and gold, and the human metabolism of arsenic, selenium, and mercury. Efforts in the area of sample pre-treatment include microwave and ultrasound-assisted extractions, supercritical extraction, solid phase extraction and liquid/liquid extraction. Specific investigations of flow injection (an area of expertise in the Tyson laboratory) include the evaluation of cationic surfactants on hydride generation and reaction with arsenic and selenite, and development of manifolds for synthesizing volatile organometallic compounds. The PIs propose to develop an interface for HPLC-ICP-MS and liquid-liquid extraction pretreatment. The collaboration will provide industrial experience for students who will spend at least one summer each at Perkin-Elmer in Norwalk, Connecticut or Uberlingen, Germany.

Trace element detection is enormously important in the biological, medical and environmental sciences. The difficulty of detecting small amounts of key metals in matrices such as biological fluids and soil still limits our ability to understand transport and function in these media.

The project will provide science teachers in the middle schools in the Springfield, Massachusetts school district with opportunities to acquire science content knowledge and training in inquiry and project-based teaching, including the opportunity to conduct research as a part of a team with GK-12 Fellows, and UMass faculty. The Fellows and faculty will gain an understanding of the needs and culture of the schools, laying the foundations for future collaborations. The project will provide Fellows with increased experience in effective pedagogical approaches, and will also provide a diverse population of middle school students with role models and mentors. Middle school teachers in a master's degree program will work in teams (six in all) consisting of a UMass faculty participant, two GK-12 Fellows, and up to three middle school teachers) on the implementation of research projects with theirs school students. STEM Connections will start with summer workshops for the Fellows and teachers. Teams will then work together for two semesters in a course focused on teacher learning of project-based instruction while concomitantly developing similar projects with middle school students. This project is receiving partial support from the Directorate for Engineering.

PI: Tyson Institution: U of Massachusetts


This award supports a research and education project at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) under the direction of Julian Tyson. He will investigate procedures to determine the arsenic content in soils and water with the goal of devising one that middle and high school students can use to investigate arsenic leaching from pressure treated wood into the environment. The first phase of the project will involve research towards developing a low cost field test using spectrophotometric detection techniques. This will result in an analysis procedure and apparatus suitable for use by K-12 students.
In the second phase, the test procedure will be field tested in middle and high school classrooms in Springfield MA. It will also be incorporated into the UMass undergraduate analytical chemistry laboratory classes. The research team aims to create curricular materials for use both at the middle school-high school level and the undergraduate level.

The Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (NEAGEP) will implement a
variety of innovative and proven strategies for the recruitment, admission, retention and preparation for faculty positions of underrepresented minority graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). For the past five years, a number of these strategies were developed and evaluated by the faculty at five Alliance (University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey) and five Partner (Jackson State University, Lincoln University, Long Island University, Medgar Evers College and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez) Institutions. NEAGEP will be expanded and enhanced by the addition of the five other major land-grant universities in the Northeast (the Universities of Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) into the Alliance. Two new Partner Institutions, Bennett College and, beginning in the second year of the new funding cycle, Trinity College, will also join NEAGEP. Together, the New England Land-Grant Universities bring to NEAGEP the
resources of 6,000 faculty members, a half-billion dollars in annual sponsored research, connections to 26 additional minority-serving (predominantly African American and Hispanic) institutions and access to the growing Native American population in northern New England. Building upon the foundation laid and the experience gained in the past five years, this expanded Alliance will more effectively coordinate efforts to match graduate students' interests and skills with a broad range of graduate programs. It will also create a critical mass of minority graduate students with
similar research interests. To address the national shortage and increase the number of underrepresented STEM minority doctoral students, NEAGEP proposes the following strategies:

Recruitment: (a) design a common supplementary NEAGEP application; (b) facilitate faculty
involvement in Diversity Teams; (c) revise practices in summer research programs; (d) continue fall recruiting weekends; (e) ensure multi-institutional presence at national meetings; (f) invite Partner faculty to research residencies at Alliance Institutions; (g) hold Partner Science Days at Partner Institutions;

Admissions: (a) initiate Rapid Response contacts; (b) involve NEAGEP graduate program directors;
(c) expand NEAGEP Research Internships; (d) offer NEAGEP first and last year research assistantships;

Retention: (a) participate in the Graduate School mentoring grant competition; (b) offer mentoring
workshops; (c) set up mentoring website; (d) rotate NEA Day among Alliance Institutions;

Future faculty preparation: (a) integrate teaching and research preparation for underrepresented minority STEM graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; and (b) offer career counseling and placement assistance.

Not all strategies will be undertaken by all institutions, but all will embark on some activities in each area and take part in cross-cutting initiatives such as: (a) implementation of a NEAGEP-wide Networking Group; (b) expansion of the NEAGEP office structure and functions; (c) execution of NEAGEP-wide sharing of admissions information; (d) establishment of joint Partner-Alliance doctoral programs; and (e) participation in an Alliance-wide comprehensive evaluation.

Intellectual Merit: The NEAGEP strategies proposed are both innovative and transferable. The
underlying principle is that they are faculty-driven and championed by the administration.
Implementation of these strategies will advance fundamental cultural change in academia and promote the success of underrepresented minority students in STEM doctoral programs. The prior success with the Alliance structure provided the impetus for the logical extension of activities to the neighboring New England Land-Grant Universities. By extending the Alliance activities to this group, hundreds more underrepresented minority STEM students and beginning faculty will benefit.

Broader Impact: The number of U.S. citizens applying for graduate study in STEM disciplines is
inadequate to meet the growing national needs in these areas. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the number of international graduate students applying to STEM graduate programs has decreased by over 30% nationwide this year. The number of U.S. STEM scientists needs to be increased if this country is to remain competitive on the world stage. The fundamental, and most important, impact of this program will be to create an environment in which minority persons can succeed in the STEM disciplines in the U.S. The proposed efforts will lead to the successful recruitment, admission and retention of a diverse group of graduate students and will encourage these students to pursue careers in the professoriate.

The Division of Chemistry supports Julian Tyson of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as a Discovery Corps Senior Fellow for the 2007-2008 academic year. Tyson's group will study natural and anthropogenic arsenic compounds and will develop measurement technologies needed to determine the relevant arsenic compounds in complex environmental and biological matrices. In collaboration with life-sciences faculty, they will apply the techniques of molecular biology to the interaction of arsenic compounds with plants and microorganisms. These studies will increase our understanding of the environmental cycling of arsenic and inform the development of novel bio-remediation strategies. The research will be integrated with teaching via the development of an interdisciplinary, undergraduate concentration in environmental science and the further development of an independent study program, in which first-year students engage in authentic research in small groups mentored by upper-level undergraduates. Underrepresented K-12 students and teachers will participate in guided inquiry activities related to arsenic in their local environments. Students' understanding of the global dimensions of chemical measurements and remediation will be enhanced by the development of links with international researchers. Tyson will visit several universities and institutes in Bangladesh, Thailand, and Vietnam, three countries currently dealing with severe contamination issues.

The Discovery Corps Fellowship Program seeks new postdoctoral and professional development models that combine research expertise with professional service. Discovery Corps Fellows leverage their research expertise through projects that address areas of national need. Their projects enhance research capacity and infrastructure and contribute to workforce development and job creation. The Discovery Corps Program supports both Postdoctoral Fellows and Senior Fellows.

The Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (NEAGEP) is a highly interactive group of Research I and minority-serving institutions that includes private and public, as well as large and small schools. By piloting and sharing novel strategies, the Alliance has made a large contribution to diversifying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) Ph.D. programs in the Northeast. The number of URM students earning STEM doctorates from these institutions has nearly doubled. Unfortunately, there has been neither sufficient numbers of students nor funds to meaningfully evaluate what strategies are most effective for recruiting and retaining URM STEM doctoral students. Even more relevant to the goal of the NSF AGEP program, there has been no assessment of what factors influence career choices of URM STEM Ph.D.s and what factors ensure their success in academia.
To address these issues, the PI group will work with external evaluators at TERC, a STEM education organization, to conduct a NEAGEP-wide summative evaluation. The evaluators will conduct personal interviews with current STEM doctoral students and Ph.D. graduates of NEAGEP institutions, and also solicit input from all NEAGEP coordinators to develop two on-line surveys. One survey will be administered to approximately 565 URMs who obtained STEM Ph.D. degrees during the 10 years of NEAGEP, and the other to the over 550 current URM STEM doctoral students. The results will be important for developing new programs in the next phase of NEAGEP.
Intellectual Merit: There is now a sufficiently large population of students at different points in their careers so that an external team can conduct a very informative, large-scale evaluation of NEAGEP programs. The team will objectively assess what types of activities are most effective at diversifying the STEM professoriate. The focus will be on recruitment and retention activities, but, more importantly, on what activities influence these students to pursue careers in academia. This evaluation will provide new insights important for increasing diversity in the professoriate, a goal that must be achieved in order to engage a broader portion of the U.S. citizenry in STEM.
Broader Impacts: The results will generate information that will inform the design and revision of programs to recruit URM undergraduates into STEM graduate programs. In addition, these data will also promote institutionalization of programs that increase participation of both URM and non-URM U.S. students in STEM. Finally, the evaluation findings will be published so that other institutions and alliances can conserve and/or better direct resources by learning what does and does not work in large and small, as well as public and private, universities that comprise NEAGEP.
Integration of Research with Teaching and Learning: Many of the NEAGEP strategies involve integration of research with teaching and learning. By formally evaluating the impact of these strategies, it will be determined which are most effective. The effective strategies will then be expanded to integrate research and teaching initiatives across NEAGEP and publicized through the AGEP network.