This year's winners are Birmingham-Southern College, Calvin College, College of Staten Island/CUNY, Davidson College, Earlham College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Illinois Wesleyan University, Lebanon Valley College, Marist College, State University College at Buffalo, State University of New York–Geneseo, University of Redlands, Viterbo University, Wheaton College, and Wilkes University.
The Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program (USRP) is a national competitive awards program available in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Fifteen awards are made annually, and each award provides up to $60,000, paid over three years at $20,000 per year, for joint use by the biology and chemistry departments at each recipient institution. The funding supports research stipends for undergraduate students and ancillary programs that foster interactions between these departments.
Launched in 2000 as a national competition, awards will be made through 2009. This ten-year, $9 million initiative is funded by The Merck Company Foundation and administered by AAAS. The program goals are to:
• enhance undergraduate education through research experiences that emphasize the interrelationship between chemistry and biology;
• encourage students to pursue graduate education in chemistry and life sciences; and
• foster undergraduate programs and activities that bridge chemistry and biology.
The program is open to qualified institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico that offer an American Chemical Society-approved program in chemistry and confer 10 or fewer graduate degrees annually in biology and chemistry combined. For additional information, send questions merck@aaas.org or visit the web site at www.merckaaasusrp.org.
The Merck Company Foundation is a U.S.-based private, charitable foundation. Established in 1957 by Merck & Co., Inc., the Foundation is funded entirely by the company. Key priorities of the foundation's mission are ADVANCING biomedical science training and education and improving access to health care worldwide.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and serves some 265 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.