This award provides funds to the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History to help support 48 undergraduate students over a three year period who will participate in both a formal curriculum and closely supervised independent research in areas such as systematics, botany, zoology, and paleobiology. Research and training in organismal biology, systematic, and ecology has declined at most universities over the last decade, even though these fields are critical for evaluating and addressing loss of biodiversity and global change. Museums still carry out basic research in these fields, but have had little to do with undergraduate education. The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Research Training Program at the Smithsonian Institution is designed to stimulate undergraduates to pursue careers in the natural sciences through a balanced program of hands-on research, scientific lectures, and group discussions. The 10-week long summer program emphasizes an independent research project supervised by a member of the scientific staff. The training value of the project is enhanced by a set of lectures, discussions, field trips, and laboratory and collections demonstrations. The strengths of the NMNH Research Training Program are the large number of research staff (over 120 Ph.D.-level scientists and 250 technicians), the breadth of research projects (e.g. morphological and molecular systematics, paleobiology, behavior, morphometrics, ecology), the size of the collections (more than 119 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, etc.), and the excellent libraries (over 1 million texts and journals). The combination of these resources creates an unparalleled environment for getting undergraduates started on careers as researchers in the natural sciences. As of 1992, students who complete the Program now have the opportunity to apply for a Pew Fellowship in Systematic Biology at the Smithsonian that will allow them to continue their research training at the NMNH through the end of their undergraduate education.
