CSULB lands $1.6 million grant

By Caroline Limuti
Summer Forty-Niner

California State Long Beach's College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics received a four-year, $1.6 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The grant will be used to create a research-based, "Honors in Biological Sciences Program" for undergraduate students in biological sciences and biochemistry, Cal State University announced.

"This grant will be extremely beneficial to a number of our undergraduate science students," CSULB President Robert Maxson said.  "The honors program will provide students an opportunity to gain valuable research experience, encourage them to pursue graduate studies and give them a better understanding of existing career opportunities in the life sciences."

The courses being created for the honors program are meant to "improve students' critical thinking, writing and oral communication skills, as well as their ability to think like scientist," the university said in a press release.

"This program will have a curriculum that stretches from the freshman year through the senior year and includes a senior thesis," said Margaret Merryfield, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.  "It will also allow the students, from the very beginning of their academic careers, to learn more about what being a life scientist is all about."

HHMI awarded 53 grants totaling $50.3 million to universities and colleges in the United States and Puerto Rico.  The CSULB grant is one of only five given to universities in California and only two given to campuses in the CSU system.  Humboldt State received $700,000 , according to CSULB spokesman Rick Gloady.