This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project will enable Barnard College, a liberal arts institution for undergraduate women, to modernize the research infrastructure of nearly one entire floor of Altschul Hall, its main science building. The result of this project will be three times as much wet laboratory research space as is now available. In addition, the floor will include a completely reconfigured layout to accommodate an array of shared equipment and instrumentation, a key improvement that will foster greater opportunities for interdisciplinary interactions among faculty and the students they advise and mentor.
Faculty and undergraduate students in the chemistry department, with allied users from biology and environmental science, will be the principal beneficiaries. Their research programs include bioinorganic, biological, synthetic organic, physical organic, environmental, and biophysical chemistry. Barnard science faculty already have a strong record in garnering external grant support; this project will allow them to further leverage these funds, generating even more research and publishing activity with the undergraduates working in their labs. This project will give Barnard College the modernized resources necessary to build an even stronger program. Further, it will provide infrastructure vital to the chemistry department's growth, allowing it to add two tenure-track faculty positions over the next several years. Enlarging the department will promote an increase in the number of research opportunities for undergraduate students and the number of science majors at Barnard.
Broadening participation in undergraduate research is at the core of Barnard?s science enterprise. Faculty-directed research with undergraduates is central to this mission. These research experiences allow students to participate in the process of scientific discovery and to acquire the skills necessary to advance knowledge in science. The proposed renovations will markedly increase the ability of Barnard faculty and research students to make cutting-edge scientific contributions in the areas of chemistry, biology, and environmental science. Participation in undergraduate research gives women, members of a group traditionally underrepresented in science, a strong foundation and powerful impetus to pursue scientific careers. This contributes significantly to building the nation's science infrastructure.
