{"id":33575,"date":"2024-08-06T12:37:32","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T16:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=33575"},"modified":"2024-08-06T12:37:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T16:37:32","slug":"furman-receives-nsf-award-to-accelerate-research-promote-diversity-in-stem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-receives-nsf-award-to-accelerate-research-promote-diversity-in-stem\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman receives NSF award to accelerate research, promote diversity in STEM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Furman University\u2019s Department of Chemistry<\/a> has received a $465,000 National Science Foundation grant toward funding Research Experiences for Undergraduates<\/a> (REU). The three-year grant will fund up to 10 undergraduates and three faculty members over the course of 10 weeks in the summers of 2025-2027.<\/p>\n

Furman has continuously received REU funding to train undergraduate scientists for more than 40 years, a nod to the university\u2019s emphasis on teaching and its success in the sciences.<\/p>\n

As an REU Site, Furman will host three visiting faculty members and five of their students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions or women\u2019s colleges.<\/p>\n

The visiting teams will be matched with five Furman undergraduates led by Furman faculty based on the students\u2019 research interests.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a win-win proposition, said George Shields<\/a>, a chemistry professor and principal investigator on the proposal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"white

George Shields, Department of Chemistry.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cRunning an undergraduate research program is not easy,\u201d Shields said. \u201cIt takes a lot of time, money and energy. By bringing teams together from schools with fewer resources than we have, we can accelerate their and our research efforts. We have the infrastructure, and our visitors will bring the ideas and students to try out new research directions or improve upon current research projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young researchers will study materials characterization, chemical synthesis and seek answers to big questions like the origins of life, Shields said. They\u2019ll learn the ropes of cutting-edge equipment like mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance and high-throughput computing resources, among other tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the primary reasons Furman continues to receive funding for these kinds of partnerships is because we have the best research infrastructure of any PUI (Primarily Undergraduate Institution) in the Southeast, and perhaps in the country,\u201d Shields said.<\/p>\n

The NSF rarely grants REU awards to universities that do not award doctoral degrees. From 2016 to 2020, for example, only 2% of proposals submitted by PUIs were funded by the REU program, according to Shields. Furman was one of the few.<\/p>\n

Shields notes that Furman\u2019s role in preparing future scientists from all backgrounds and ethnicities has much to do with the success of its NSF-REU proposals. That aspect of the NSF-REU program is what he values most.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that is vitally important about DEI is that it promotes excellence,\u201d he said. \u201cScience is a very creative endeavor, and diversity of ideas is critical for examining a familiar data set in new and different ways, which may lead to a scientific breakthrough.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvolving scientists from more institutions in research in a high-quality environment like we have at Furman will make for better science and improve STEM experiences across the state and Southeast. True teacher-scholars, who bring their students into the research laboratory, are essential for training the next generation of STEM professionals,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Furman has continuously received NSF-REU funding to train undergraduate scientists for more than 40 years, a nod to the university\u2019s emphasis on teaching and its success in the sciences. George Shields is PI for this latest grant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":33579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,70,2711,77,58,35,61,55],"tags":[501,2936,965,2937,2938,505],"class_list":["post-33575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chemistry","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-engaged-learning","category-integrative-research","category-internships","category-parent-news","category-the-furman-advantage","category-undergraduate-research","tag-black-representation-in-stem","tag-diversity-in-stem","tag-nsf","tag-nsf-reu","tag-stem-outreach","tag-women-in-stem"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33575"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33581,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33575\/revisions\/33581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}