RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY
Computational chemistry faculty from undergraduate institutions across the US have formed a consortium known as the Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate computational chemistRY (MERCURY). The consortium initially allowed faculty and students from Colgate University, Connecticut College, Hamilton College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, College of the Holy Cross, St. Lawrence University, and Vassar College access to state-of-the art computational power and numerous opportunities for student and faculty collaboration, mentoring and cross-fertilization. Our objective upon forming the MERCURY consortium was to help our undergraduate research programs to flourish and this has indeed occurred as evidenced by the number of proposals and papers submitted by our members either collectively or individually. The consortium initially received $780K from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation program (NSF-MRI) to purchase computational resources. MERCURY institutions provided $615K in matching dollars and we used these funds to assemble an excellent collection of computers that provide heavily used computing cycles for our faculty and undergraduate students. We received a second NSF-MRI grant in 2005 to buy a Beowulf cluster and to expand the consortium across the country.
Our annual meeting is open to all undergraduates and all faculty members, from any institution. We have subsidized the meeting costs and brought in six or seven outstanding speakers each year (~three female speakers each year) to make for a quality event. The first six conferences were successful, with an average of 75 attendees (40 undergraduates, 35 faculty; 45% of the speakers and attendees were women) coming from as far away as California, Texas, and Canada. Three of our research groups consist of at least 20% African-American or Hispanic-American students. Student researchers mentored by MERCURY faculty have gone on to win a Rhodes, six Fulbrights, a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and fourteen Goldwater Fellowships, and have matriculated to a variety of graduate institutions including Columbia, Oxford, Yale, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Over the first three-year grant period, the seven faculty and their students published 44 research papers in peer-reviewed journals. This equates to two published papers per year per faculty member, which is four times higher than the usual productivity of a faculty member at a PUI. Further, in the four years since the consortium was established, the number of external grant awards received by the faculty more than tripled and, together, the faculty raised more than four million dollars to support computational chemistry research involving undergraduate students. The bulk of this funding was used to provide summer stipends, which allowed our students to immerse themselves full-time in research. We credit this activity with our high rate of success in recruiting and retaining students, particularly those from underrepresented groups. We worked with more than 110 undergraduates on research projects during this time. Joan Frye, the Director of the MRI program at NSF, called me in September of 2005 to inform me that we had submitted the best final project report that she had received over the last five-year period, and that she was going to use our project as the focal point of her discussion with the next MRI outside review panel. We have since invited new junior faculty into the consortium, received a second grant in 2005 to build a Beowulf cluster and continue our meetings for three more years, and we are currently writing our third grant, with an expanded group of 12 faculty from around the country. As junior faculty in MERCURY become senior faculty, they help mentor our new colleagues on how to maximize their research productivity with undergraduates.
Our research projects utilize the tools of computational chemistry to address significant problems in environmental, materials, physical and biological chemistry. We find that our students are naturally drawn to these computer-based projects and often become involved in research early in their undergraduate careers, often as first years or even pre-matriculated students. Mentoring students in meaningful research projects is a valuable and integral part of being a research active chemist at an undergraduate institution. The faculty who comprise the MERCURY consortium choose careers at PUIs with the intention of focusing their energy on undergraduate student involvement. Undergraduates are typically our only coworkers and the success of our research programs depends heavily on effective mentoring. The quality of student learning in such a highly attentive atmosphere is one of the reasons why a disproportionate number of Ph.D. chemists received their baccalaureate training at undergraduate institutions. The faculty involved in the MERCURY consortium have mentored over 250 undergraduates, of whom approximately half have gone on to graduate school, and a disproportionate number of these students have been women and minorities.
The MERCURY Consortium annual meeting is one of the highlights of our work. Students and faculty benefit intellectually and socially from engaging in detailed scientific discussions with others. The ability to discuss science with others passionately engaged in the same subfield is a rare opportunity for an undergraduate and we anticipate that these exchanges will further our students' education and continue to encourage students' interest in pursuing graduate studies in chemistry.
