When Assistant Professor of Biology Randy Miller began his teaching stint at Baker University, he was working to obtain a grant supporting undergraduate studies in the biology field.
This grant, which would allot four institutions $600,000, is distributed by the National Science Foundation. Baker, along with Fresno City College (California), Brigham Young University (Utah) and the Academy of Natural Science (Pennsylvania), will receive $150,000 to spread over four years.
“What we’ve been commissioned to do is send undergraduate research teams to each of the long-term environmental research sites in the United States,” Miller said.
At the sites, students will collect samples of moss and lichen and bring those back to schools to make microscope slides.
“After we identify the animals, we will donate them to the Academy of Natural Science, but in the process we will also extract the DNA, sequence it and publish the results,” Miller said.
Miller said participating students will travel to places such as California, the northeast United States and even spend a summer at the Academy of Natural Science.
“Students who work with me will get a broad experience on the project,” he said. “Most students will make presentations at regional, national and potentially international conferences. Some will even be co-authors in the publication of the research results.”
Senior Kyrstan Hubbel said the grant will be beneficial because it will provide an opportunity to participate in research not usually done at the undergraduate level.
“The grant will definitely be great for me because I get the opportunity to help (Miller) write papers that get published.”
Hubbel said she worked with Miller on a previous grant and was able to learn from the experience.
“Over the summer we went to New York and participated in a 24-hour period where scientists from all over the United States looked for species in their area of study,” she said. “After 24 hours, we put our results together to see how extensive the species in Central Park are.”
Although Miller said his previous research trips were beneficial and worthwhile, he said the next four years will provide students with many different opportunities.
“Here at Baker we will have a team, and I will employ anywhere from three to five students throughout the four years,” he said. “We expect to add two to three hundred new species to the list that is already known for North America and potentially describe a new 20 to 30 new to science. My project will be the first of its kind.”
Though the grant will be beneficial for science, Miller said it will also positively reflect Baker University.
“We will improve the national image because it’s very unusual for a small school to get a major research grant,” he said. “Our esteem in the scientific world goes up because of it. Obviously it will impress alumni and attract potential students.”
Miller said the grant, in many ways, paves the road for future help in the science field and came as a result of a lot of effort.
“This is the second grant I’ve gotten,” he said. “The first one took me seven applications to get, but this one I got on the first application primarily because we worked very hard and met an extremely solid proposal.”
The application took three months to compile and was 75 to 80 pages long, Miller said.
“It takes a lot of knowledge, experimentation, preliminary data, knowing what your colleagues can and cannot do and finding the right combination of a team to make commitments and be confident in knowing that we can work together for the next four years.”