November 6, 2003

Summer scientists get head start on freshman year

By Megan Fellman

Starting their college careers early, 12 incoming freshmen took part in a six-week workshop of collecting soil samples in Chicago neighborhoods and analyzing the samples for their lead content.

The students were the first participants in the new Undergraduate Success in Science (USS) program at Northwestern. Hilary Godwin, associate professor of chemistry and one of only 20 scientists in the country to be appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, created the program to bring the creativity her students have shown in the laboratory to the undergraduate classroom.

“This research project — to map out soil lead levels in neighborhoods in the city of Chicago — is desperately needed,” said Godwin. “It was a great project because the kids learned about the city and actually did fieldwork and became familiar with neighborhoods.” Godwin, who studies how lead interacts with biological molecules and how those interactions result in lead toxicity, taught the workshop with J. Scott Baker, assistant professor of chemistry at Chicago State University.

By immersing students in a research project early in their undergraduate years, Godwin hopes that a positive experience in the sciences will encourage students to consider graduate school and a career in academia.

Students who completed the summer workshop also may pursue independent research projects during their freshman year in the laboratories of Godwin and her collaborators as well as participate in community outreach activities in collaboration with Chicago health care workers and educators in the Chicago Public School system.

The summer program focused on sharpening important academic and team-building skills. Students worked in teams to collect and analyze soil samples and then compared the distribution of lead contamination within Chicago neighborhoods to historical usage of the land and to lead poisoning rates. In addition to studying environmental contamination, they learned about frontier areas of science, including biosensors and nanotechnology.