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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.
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 CaliforniaDavis, 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. |
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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,
Microsofts product unit manager for financial services, worked directly
with Microsofts 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 Microsofts 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.
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