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Funds will further enhance College’s tradition of undergraduate research opportunities.
Kenneth V. Mills, assistant professor of chemistry at the College, has received a five-year, $795,000 grant from the Faculty Early Career Development program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program supports early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century, according to the NSF.
The grant will support Mills’ ambitious project, titled “CAREER: Alternative Mechanisms of HINT Domain Autoprocessing: An Integrated Undergraduate Research and Education Program.” The research component explores unanswered questions about the chemical mechanism of two related proteins, hedgehog proteins and inteins, which share a HINT domain. Inteins are protein segments that both excise themselves from, as well as tie together, flanking protein segments. The project will broaden the understanding of inteins in particular and biochemical catalysis in general. This knowledge can be applied to hedgehog proteins, which play vital roles in development, and whose mutation can result in the development of certain cancers.
In addition, Mills will make significant educational contributions to both introductory and upper-level courses at Holy Cross and the biochemistry concentration, which focuses on the chemistry underlying biological structure and function.One component will be the design and implementation of new laboratories for the “Discovery Chemistry” curriculum, which introduces students to science through the laboratory rather than through textbooks and lectures alone. Since 1989, Holy Cross has experimented with laboratory-based, process-oriented curriculum—becoming a pioneer in the pedagogy of the chemistry discovery process.
“A major issue is to ensure that our students are exposed to a research environment by having labs that rival those in research institutions,” says Mills. “These grants allow us to move closer to that goal and allow our students to have close contact with faculty and do research at the highest level possible. The Discovery Chemistry program can make science come alive for our students at the early stages of their education at Holy Cross—and hook them into science, encouraging them to experience careers in the sciences and medicine.”
Nationally recognized for excellence, the Holy Cross department of chemistry is among the nation’s top producers of chemistry graduates certified by the American Chemical Society.
Mills, who has been a professor at the College since 2001, also received a $250,000 grant from the NSF in 2003 as the co-principal investigator with Robert Bellin, assistant professor of biology at Holy Cross. The grant was used to establish a protein purification core facility at the College, which is currently used by both faculty and students in research and teaching laboratories. Mills’ research has also been funded by the Research Corporation and by the Donors of the Petroleum Research Fund, as administered by the American Chemical Society.
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