The College's Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations Robyn Piggot and Director of Development William Barlow were involved in the year-long planning process of receiving the grant and securing matching funds.
Associate Professor of Biology and Chair of the biology department Ethan Temeles explained the initial process for securing the grant. In order to obtain the funding that the College has received at this point, Temeles said that Piggot had to provide the Kresge Foundation with a list of equipment that had been purchased within the last five years off of faculty grants and funds, totaling $500,000. "We were able to do this, which says something about the high quality of faculty here and their ability to obtain outside funds," he said.
Piggot elaborated on the broader purpose of the grant. "The focus of this grant is environmental science. $250,000 out of the $500,000 will be used to purchase equipment, distributed among several departments," she said. Piggot explained that this grant will be the second one awarded from the Kresge Foundation to Amherst. The first grant was given to the College during the early 1990s but was not focused on collaborative, interdisciplinary environmental science.
Faculty members involved in environmentally oriented research attended meetings that focused on the new scientific equipment needed in various departments. They also discussed how the grant will provide students with future research and fieldwork opportunities. Faculty members who are included in the project are Temeles, Assistant Professors of Biology Jill Miller and Ethan Clotfelter, Assistant Professors of Geology Anna Martini and James Hagadorn and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Karena McKinney.
Piggot explained that collaborative faculty meetings were held during the year-long process. "The faculty was great about working together. Every affected department is getting some of the equipment it wanted," she said.
Some of the equipment that will be purchased with Kresge funds includes a gas chromatograph and a mercury analyzer that will be used by McKinney and Martini in the project known as Mount Tom. The project will focus on the emission of mercury into the atmosphere from an aging coal-fired power plant located at the foot of Mount Tom, approximately 15 miles from campus. An Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS0) for Martini's laboratory will also be purchased and used in her teaching and research on environmental geochemistry.
Some of the funds from the Kresge grant will help with the purchase of equipment, but a large portion will be used to provide students with summer stipend and research opportunities. Miller discussed one of her future goals concerning student research opportunities in the field. "I am working to develop local study systems such that future students can explore the tremendous diversity of reproduction in flowering plants," she said.
Several ongoing projects in Miller's lab will remain themes for future student research. Specifically, her research focuses on the reproductive strategies of plants in understanding how and why the transition to separate sexes occurs. She is also interested in the floral adaptations that plants possess which appear to promote outcrossing, or the transfer of genetic information among plants.
Miller, who provides students in her lab with field research opportunities, also explained that funds from her current grant supported taking Josh Shak '06 to Africa this past summer. "Josh's project is centered around understanding how Lycium dispersed from the Americas to Africa and, once there, radiated throughout southern Africa," she explained. Miller's research lab this semester includes Amherst students Jessica Blanton '06E, Ellen Leffler '06, Min Wang '06, Shak, Shannon Rush '07 and UMass graduate student Natalie Feliciano.
The "challenge" aspect of the Kresge Science Initiative Grant involves raising $1 million by Oct. 1, 2006 to support student research in the environmental sciences. If the $1 million is raised by this set date, the Foundation will award Amherst with a second installment of $250,000. The fundraising challenge, led by Barlow, Piggot and Director of 25th Reunion Giving Ellie Ballard, involves meetings with alumni in the efforts to raise funds for this challenge.
Temeles discussed his participation in the fundraising effort. "Anna Martini and I have been involved in one face-to-face meeting with Bill Barlow, Robyn Piggot and Ellie Ballard and some of the alumni, especially Anne Melissa Dowling '80, Elisabeth Schupf Lonsdale '81 and Susan Sigda Lotocki '83, and have had a few telephone conferences," he said. "These conferences have led to plans for donor events where faculty and students will talk about their research with alumni in the hopes of raising funds for environmental studies at Amherst."
Piggot and Barlow have also assembled brochures on the Edward Hitchcock Fund for student research in environmental science, which is the name of the campaign set to raise the $1 million needed to obtain the second installment of $250,000. The brochure profiles faculty members who are involved in environmentally oriented research. Among the profiled faculty members are Temeles, Martini, Hagadorn, Clotfelter, Miller and McKinney. The brochure will be sent to alumni as part of the fundraising effort.
President Anthony Marx discussed the grant's importance, while elaborating on relationships between faculty and students. "The College is grateful for support for our various effort. [The Kresge Grant] is aimed at how the College can go further and provide research opportunities for students one-on-one with the faculty," he said. "It's a hallmark of the Amherst education and one we hope we can expand and one that the Committee on Academic Priorities has currently been discussing."
Miller hopes research opportunities will expand for students in the future. "I hope to be able to take students to the field and the Kresge Grant will go a long way to helping bring about opportunities for our students," she said. "I am pleased to be part of the environmental science faculty at Amherst College."