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Assistant Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Dr. Scott Stevens was awarded the UT College of Natural Sciences Teaching Excellence Award this year and with good reason: he’s able to keep his students awake during their 8 a.m. lab class. These aren’t just any ordinary labs, however, they are the labs under the new program that Stevens created last year called the Freshman Research Initiative. Through this two-year program, students in their freshman and sophomore years get hands-on research experience in a real lab in chemistry, biochemistry or molecular biology. They take a class called Research Methods their first semester and begin doing authentic, publishable research with faculty members by the next semester. “The motivation for setting up the Freshman Research Initiative was twofold - first, while teaching incoming freshmen students an introductory cell biology course, I realized that nearly all of the biology majors were absolutely sure that they were destined for a career as a medical doctor, which is great, however the number of students who later attend medical school is actually far, far lower. This program was created in part to expose the students to alternative career choices in the natural sciences. Second, when undergraduates come to my own laboratory to get research experience, they are completely untrained and although I enjoy training them one-on-one, it seemed to me that I would be able to take more undergraduates into my laboratory, and make them productive scientists if they received some intensive training prior to their junior year, which is when most students are exposed to research,” he said. The pilot program began last fall and included 45 students and is expanding to 150 more students this year. Essentially, this is a way for students to “get their feet wet a little early,” he said. Maryam Kaous, one of the first students to join the program, said she enjoys “being given an inside look on what it’s like to do research…most people start out washing dishes.” Unlike following directions from a manual where “you know what your findings are going to be and you’re not thinking about what you’re doing, you don’t know the results and so it keeps you persevering until you succeed.” Kaous’ team met early in the morning, but she claims Stevens always managed to make them laugh and wake them up. “He’s a great mentor.” The FRI has received $4.6 million in funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation. Stevens hopes it will eventually expand to include other disciplines like computer science, eventually reaching every department in the College of Natural Sciences. Stevens’ lab studies ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) involved in pre-mRNA splicing, which occurs in all eukaryotes. “It turns out that most things that happen inside our cells take place in the context of an RNP molecule, and one of the most complex RNPs in the cell functions in pre-mRNA splicing,” he said. Stevens is interested in how these particular RNPs function, when they function and how their structure affects their function. This is important because 25% of all human genetic diseases are caused by mRNA splicing gone wrong, and “we are trying to understand these processes in graphic detail so that we can figure out how to correct them when they cause disease,” he said. Stevens was awarded a Natural Science Foundation CAREER award last year for research in this area and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar grant for his laboratory to study the function of RNA helicases in gene expression. |
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