May 15, 2003
Connecting the Sciences
New Advisory Group Aims to Plan and Promote GW Sciences
By Greg
Licamele
It’s not often that biologists, chemists, geologists, mathematicians,
physicists, psychologists, geographers, forensic scientists, anthropologists,
and statisticians come together.
But, as part of an effort to advance and unify the sciences in the Columbian
College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS), representatives from those departments
now gather regularly to plan, implement, and promote their areas collectively
and individually.
“We’re working across the sciences in a concentrated way to
promote them through a CCAS-specific effort at selective excellence,”
says Dean William Frawley. “The sciences are part of what we think
of as Selective Excellence II, areas of strength and visibility that
have not been singled out for University-wide support, but will get
college support for advancement. This effort will help GW attract very
accomplished undergraduate students, increase graduate assistants and
fellowships, and secure additional external funding. It will increase
all of the measures that are taken as indicative of a major research
university.”
The Science Advisory Group is examining such issues as facilities, equipment,
grants management, faculty recruitment, and undergraduate and graduate
educational experiences. Frawley says that the critical feature of the
Science Advisory Group is to allow disciplines to work among themselves
and with other GW schools to build a comprehensive science initiative.
“To continue to be effective under changing environments, we must
be flexible,” says William Parke, professor of physics and chair
of the department. “One sign of flexibility is the creation of
new alliances between research groups, not just with the Columbian College,
but across many schools.”
Robert Donaldson, chair of the biology department and the Robert L.
Weintraub Professor of Biological Sciences, says working with other
CCAS departments and GW schools is essential for coherent and cooperative
program design to benefit students, faculty members, and the University.
One example is the recent $1.7 million grant from the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute to help fund undergraduate science programs in bioinformatics
and computational molecular biology, as well as a new partnership with
the Institute for Genomic Research. This grant involves CCAS, the School
of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of Medicine and Health
Sciences.
“Its purpose is to bring together different disciplines that haven’t
necessarily worked together to give undergraduates of this generation
a different perspective on science than the norm in education,”
Donaldson says. “This brings together the mathematical and computational
sciences with the life sciences, with the realization that the new efforts
in science are really going to involve people who understand computation
and statistics to deal with biological data.”
Donaldson says funds from the Hughes grant and the University are also
providing a new laboratory in Bell Hall to allow many students to take
courses that engage them in more advanced approaches to biology.
Parke says the physics department, along with biology and other programs,
has devoted resources to biophysics research to create a first-rate
program.
“Our ability to calculate protein folding from basic physical laws
adds strength to the more general interdisciplinary proteomics program,”
Parke notes.
Linking research and education is a key plan of the Science Advisory
Group. Doing so recognizes what the departments of physics, chemistry,
and biology have traditionally done – hands-on laboratory work
that requires the integration of research and teaching.
“Nationwide, the scientific community feels that true research
experience at the undergraduate level can make a big difference in educational
effectiveness,” Donaldson says.
With such neighbors as the NIH and NSF, Frawley believes it would be
a tragically-missed opportunity not to promote the sciences at GW, but
it needs to be done in a strategic way.
“Consider the practical context of living in DC,” he says.
“We cannot simply build a giant laboratory. Any facility we construct
must be sensitive to the whole picture — and be a multi-functional
science complex. A science initiative needs to understand GW’s
strengths, and its mission, not only in sciences proper, but also in
scientific and mathematical education (especially in the urban environment),
policy issues, and journalism.”
Another science initiative that CCAS recently launched is a series of
breakfasts for journalists to interact with faculty experts. This outreach
will help members of the media to explain the sometimes under-reported
basics of such topics as psychology and terrorism, risk and optimization,
materials science, nuclear physics, geotoxicology, and astrobiology.
“Curiously, the time-honored practices of scientific inquiry are
things that universities as a whole now value as part and parcel of
the new educational experience,” Frawley says. “We can look
to the sciences for many models of how we can advance higher education
generally.”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
