Tomasz Grzegorz Smolinski - US grants

The HBCU-UP program at Delaware State University will focus on engaging incoming freshman STEM students in programs that will enhance their academic success and identification with the University and their major discipline. We expect to significantly improve the retention and graduation rates of minority STEM students. STEM freshmen will be divided into learning communities of 5 - 6 students who will enroll together in three linked courses: a mathematics class, an English class and Freshman Seminar. Each learning community will be assigned a peer mentor who will communicate with their mentees daily and ensure that they attend their classes, go to tutoring and office hours, and meet with their study groups. Faculty mentors responsible for 4 - 5 of the freshman learning community groups will meet weekly with the peer mentors and will lead co-curricular activities involving both students and mentors. The project brings together STEM and English faculty and student services administrators to focus on revising the freshman experience of STEM students to involve them in a community of peers, peer mentors and faculty.
To support student engagement with research we will continue the successful undergraduate research program begun in the first HBCU-UP project. The proposed program will support faculty development and research. Faculty will submit research proposals for research grants to work with undergraduate students. These proposals will be reviewed by a committee. This process will help faculty develop better student research projects and give them experience in writing research grants.

Delaware State University (DSU) in partnership with Delaware's Lake Forest and Red Clay Consolidated School Districts is recruiting 28 new highly-qualified, mathematics and science teachers for Delaware and surrounding states. The Phase I Teacher Scholarship Track program provides up to 3-years in scholarships for four cohorts of 7 DSU juniors and seniors majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The scholarships help Noyce scholars complete their BS degrees in STEM disciplines and receive a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT). This program builds on DSU's NCATE-accredited teacher education program and the existing early field experiences partnerships with the Red Clay Consolidated and Lake Forest School Districts. First year Noyce Scholars are introduced to teaching by pairing them with board-certified veteran mentor teachers for extensive field experiences. The Scholars also participate in Saturday round table meetings, and receive high-quality training in standards driven inquiry- and problem-based teaching, curriculum development, teaching with technology, and reflective practice. Further, Noyce graduates enroll in a First Year Teachers Seminar course at DSU and receive stipends for continued support and professional development during their crucial first year of teaching.

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) provides support to design, implement, and assess strategies that can lead to comprehensive institutional efforts to increase the number of students receiving undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and enhance the quality of their preparation by strengthening STEM education and research at HBCUs. The project at Delaware State University seeks to "change the equation for science and mathematics" by focusing on introductory mathematics and science courses and the critical transition from the freshman to the sophomore year. The project focuses particularly on the College Algebra course, a preparation course for Calculus, since currently 89% of first time, first year students at Delaware State University place into a no-credit, developmental mathematics course.

Activities that are part of this project are: a virtual summer bridge program focusing on mathematics for all incoming freshmen declaring a STEM major; study hall for all freshmen STEM majors; and research opportunities for freshmen and sophomore STEM majors. The activities are built on pilot results from previous projects and on intervention models shown to be effective at Delaware State University. The project will be guided by an on-going evaluation and external and internal steering committees.

The long-term objective of this research is to uncover the cellular mechanisms involved in activity-dependent modification to the excitability of neurons in the spinal cord that control motor function, i.e., spinal motoneurons. Understanding how spinal motoneuron output properties can be modified by increased as well as decreased activity is a fundamental challenge with implications that span from athletic training to rehabilitation and advanced prosthetics. The project serves to generate a quantitative understanding of how persistent activation of motoneurons modulates the neurons' intrinsic excitability and how this effect, in turn, influences the neurons' output to drive muscle contraction. Motoneurons have long been thought to function simply as relays from motor commands to muscle activation. However, growing evidence demonstrates that these neurons can undergo significant modification (plasticity) that can change the relationship between input and output. Recent work with motoneurons demonstrates that plasticity in intrinsic electrical properties might be important for learning in the motor system. The goal of this project is to determine how prolonged activation, as occurs with sustained walking, changes the intrinsic excitability of motorneurons. Alongside experimental studies, the project includes the development of detailed computational models of spinal motoneuron activity before and after persistent activation that are based on but also guide the experimental work. Delaware State University is a Historically-Black, primarily undergraduate institution, with an enrollment that is >75% African-American. Thus, a broader impact of this project is the training of students who are members of under-represented groups. Trainees are exposed to a comprehensive research environment, including technical approaches representing state-of-the-art electrophysiological and computational neuroscience, as well as given career guidance, training in writing and communication, and exposure to grant proposal writing to foster the students' professional development as scientists.

Mechanisms of synaptic plasticity have been intensively studied in the central nervous system, but the potential for plasticity in neurons' intrinsic properties has received little attention. The goal of this project is to understand the plasticity of spinal motoneurons and to determine how prolonged activation, as what occurs with sustained walking, changes their intrinsic excitability. The project involves the application of electrophysiological, immunohistochemical, and pharmacological methods in mouse spinal cord slices. The overarching hypothesis is that alteration of KCNQ/Kv7.2 channel function and changes in axonal initial segment properties are the primary mechanisms of adaptation of spinal motoneurons to prolonged network activation, and that activation of excitatory synaptic inputs is required for these changes. The project includes the development of detailed computational models of spinal motoneuron activity before and after persistent activation, exploiting a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm approach capable of matching multiple selection criteria simultaneously and of generating entire collections of neuronal models. The computational models are based on experimental measurements, and the models in turn generate experimentally testable hypotheses. Thus, experiments and simulations are closely intertwined in this project.