Finger Lakes Community College Earns $3.35 Million Grant to Integrate Research into Biology Courses

SUNY Chancellor Congratulates FLCC on Becoming the First Community College to Receive High-Level Funding from National Science Foundation

Canandaigua – SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher and Finger Lakes Community College President Barbara Risser today announced that FLCC has received a $3.35 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to roll out a national model for incorporating research into community college biology courses. It is the first time an NSF grant of this level has been awarded to a community college.

“Finger Lakes Community College’s initiative is a vibrant example of SUNY research making an impact locally, statewide, and at the national level,” said Chancellor Zimpher. “As we seek to educate the next generation of scientists, whose inventions and ideas will drive economic recovery, I am most confident in FLCC’s leadership and commend the campus on this exceptional community college achievement.”

“FLCC will be the national leader in undergraduate biology education reform at the community college level,” said FLCC President Barbara Risser. “National Science Foundation grants are highly competitive and almost always awarded to research universities, so this is an especially proud day for FLCC.”

The funding comes from NSF’s Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Math) program, in which there are three levels of funding. The highest level, achieved only by FLCC this year, is extremely competitive because the projects must demonstrate that they will have impact on a national level.

Half of all college students in the nation attend community colleges, making a rigorous two-year curriculum a national priority if the U.S. is to stay competitive in the sciences, explained Jim Hewlett, professor of biology and head of the Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI) (www.ccuri.org), based at FLCC.

“Given the community college’s increasing role in preparing transfer students to four-year colleges, we need to give students the skills and knowledge necessary to become future biologists,” said Hewlett, who applied for this ambitious grant on behalf of FLCC.

In the first year of implementation, the project team, led by Hewlett, will select 16 community colleges from across the country to participate in an extensive program that begins with three-day workshops in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and the District of Columbia.

At the workshops, Hewlett and faculty from Tompkins-Cortland Community College, Jamestown Community College, and Delaware Technical and Community College will help them design, implement, and assess undergraduate research programs at their institutions. The Council for Undergraduate Research, a national organization with similar goals, will provide additional support. 

The grant will then support these institutions (supplies, equipment, faculty and curriculum development, stipends for student research assistants) for the remaining three years as their plans take shape on their respective campuses. The Social and Economic Sciences Research Center at Washington State University will evaluate the project as it unfolds.

FLCC’s work with the Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative will be featured in the Sept. 16 issue of the journal Science, the most-cited journal in the life sciences.

About FLCC:
Finger Lakes Community College (www.flcc.edu) is a State University of New York two-year higher education institution. FLCC’s 250-acre park-like campus is located in the heart of the Finger Lakes in Canandaigua, N.Y. The College offers 54 degree and certificate programs, including environmental conservation, ornamental horticulture, music recording technology, nursing, communications, graphic design, and viticulture and wine technology. FLCC’s current enrollment is 6,935 full- and part-time students.

About the State University of New York

The State University of New York is the largest comprehensive university system in the United States, educating more than 467,000 students in more than 7,500 degree and certificate programs on 64 campuses with nearly 3 million alumni around the globe. To learn more about how SUNY creates opportunity, visit www.suny.edu 

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