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  Reed receives grants for science and technology

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DThe college received a grant of $400,000 from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, of Vancouver, Washington, as part of a program to evaluate and promote the use of technology in college classes. The Murdock grant will be used in conjunction with a Mellon grant of $300,000 in a project called “Sustaining Technological Change at Liberal Arts Colleges.” chem_picture

The funding will be used to build a framework of technology that will enhance teaching, learning, and research. Martin Ringle, chief technology director at Reed, said, “by providing special funding for three years, the Murdock grant allows usto help faculty members explore and incorporate new technologies in their teaching without siphoning resources from regular computing support.”

Reed College has long been an innovator in the use of technology in a liberal arts education. Seventy percent of the Reed faculty now uses web-based course materials, multimedia software, and other digital material in their teaching. In the past two decades, the college has pioneered instructional software projects in biology, psychology, English, music, dance, philosophy, and numerous other areas of the liberal arts and sciences curriculum.


The National Science Foundation has awarded Reed College a grant of $279,641 to acquire a 400 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer for use in chemistry research and chemistry research training.

The spectrometer project is directed by Reed professor of chemistry
Patrick G. McDougal, Arthur F. Scott professor of chemistry Ronald W. McClard, associate professor of chemistry Arthur Glasfeld, and senior research associate John F. Witte.

Reed chemistry students working on the new spectro-meter will gain hands-on expertise in modern NMR methodology. It provides students with access to a research-quality instrument at the moment of their first exposure to the technique. The new spectrometer will gain broad use in teaching labs, upper-division classes, and faculty members’ personal research.


Jay Mellies, assistant professor of biology, received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) academic research enhancement award of $144,082 to study a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria known as EPEC. The award will go toward assisting Mellies in his research to determine how E. coli pathogens cause disease in humans.

Jay Mellies holds a B.S. in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of California–Davis, and he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Biologie and at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. His articles have been published in numerous national academic journals. He has been a member of the Reed faculty since 1999.

The Microsoft Corporation recently donated $203,000 worth of software to Reed, a package that includes full copies and licenses of Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Office 2000. In addition, the approximately 25 Reed alumni who work at Microsoft donated more than $10,000 to the college, an amount matched by Microsoft for a total of more than $20,000.

Joe Long ’90, Microsoft’s product unit manager for financial services, worked directly with Microsoft’s department of university relations to arrange for the software donation. A physics major at Reed, Long has worked for Microsoft for 10 years. He said, “I ran into an old friend in the hallway who happens to work for Microsoft’s university relations department. I asked him if he would give some software to Reed, and he asked, ‘What do they want?’” Reed submitted a wish list and Microsoft provided almost every item on it. Long also coordinated the fundraising drive among Reed alumni who work at Microsoft. End of Article

 

 

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2001

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