Stimulating Science
By Joe Boomgaard | LabWork
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GRAND RAPIDS — The federal stimulus act and other funds are helping to stimulate scientific research and education at Calvin College.
Since July of 2009, Calvin has received funding of more than $1.8 million, including $1.4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and smaller grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), to fund scientific research and equipment and to help provide students with firsthand lab experience, despite “stiff competition” from other schools for the awards, said Kumar Sinniah, professor of chemistry now in his 16th year at Calvin.
“We’ve had a focus on the students and training and providing employment for the students,” Sinniah told LabWork. “And we are able to buy research equipment we would not be able to get any other way. It upgrades our facilities, and the students are able to work with state-of-the-art equipment.”
Typically, Calvin faculty members do the grant writing and the upfront work and then get students involved if the proposals are funded. The students get real lab experience by becoming the “hands” of the research, performing the thinking, execution and writing of the project report, he said. Plus, they get paid for their summer research.
“Our success recently is a result of our success of the past. We’ve put a greater emphasis on interdisciplinary research and cross-disciplinary research, and we’ve had a lot more enrollment between different disciplines,” Sinniah said. “That’s the way of the future for research.”
Moreover, Sinniah said students involved in cross-disciplinary research also gain skills attractive to potential employers that increasingly like to hire researchers who have a broad range of skills.
A decade ago, Calvin’s chemistry program had perhaps five or six students. Today, that number ranges from 30 to 40 students. With that growth, Sinniah said the department and the science program overall has been challenged to find paid summer research programs for all those students, and that’s where the grants come in handy.
“During the summer, we have a strong, active, vibrant (student) research community,” he said, noting the faculty keeps up research throughout the year.
Sinniah and colleagues from Calvin, as well as Brad Wallar at Grand Valley State University, received more than $208,000 from NSF for the purchase of an atomic force microscope, an isothermal titration calorimeter and a differential scanning calorimeter. That award was the college’s third major research instrumentation proposal funded in the past year. Overall, Calvin received almost $1 million for the initiative.
The instruments will help the researchers and students study the interaction between molecules, which could help them find better ways for drugs to help patients, among other uses. With the most recent funding and past awards, the college has been upgrading its instrumentation from the 1990s with more sophisticated, modern equipment.
Sinniah received more than $55,000 in ARRA funds for a project studying enzyme inhibitor reactions, as well as nearly $45,000 from NIH to continue research he started while on sabbatical at the University of Michigan. The NIH funding will help offset some of his salary at Calvin so he can continue to oversee the research by Michigan graduate students, as well as bring some grad students and the research to Grand Rapids for his Calvin undergraduates to work on.
“For Calvin (students), they’re able to collaborate with their colleagues at Michigan and see the broader research that goes on,” he said.
Other programs recently garnering federal ARRA funds included:
* more than $487,000 to purchase a spectrometer for work by Eric Arnoys, David Benson, Chad Tatko and Amy Wilstermann
* $279,000 for a project involving a type of MRI scanning to investigate species and biomolecule identification for a project involving Wilstermann, Tatko, Benson, John Wertz and Randall DeJong
* more than $223,000 for diabetes research performed by Larry Louters
* $170,000 for Carolyn Anderson’s work on synthetic peptides and Alzheimer’s disease
* and $126,000 for Doug Griend’s research on supramolecular structures, nanomachines and thermochromic material.
As much as possible, Calvin has placed an emphasis on purchasing equipment made in the U.S., in keeping with the intent of the ARRA funds of providing jobs and helping stimulate the U.S. economy, he said.
Another $185,000 from the NSF will support geography professor Deanna van Dijk’s research and development of a geoscience course involving student research on Lake Michigan coastal dunes.
“One of the things we try to do is that we try to recruit students as freshmen and encourage them to go into research, get in a lab and work with their hands,” Sinniah said. “It helps them find out early (whether they like science).
When students start working early on research, it builds their confidence on course work and lab work. Just for that alone, it is a worthwhile task — to build that confidence early.”
Sinniah said about half of Calvin’s science students go on to graduate school, while a sizeable group goes into health-related studies, and the balance seek employment. LW
