UMEB: Research Integrating Molecular and Environmental Sciences (R.I.M.E.S.) Program

University Of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Research Integrating Molecular and Environmental Sciences (R.I.M.E.S.) Program is an international research and educational collaboration. It was created for highly motivated minority scholars who have completed two years of college and who are committed to research careers in marine or environmental sciences. As with Dr. Jackson's highly successful Biotechnology Program for nontraditional students at Massachusetts Bay Community College, the guiding philosophy of the R.I.M.E.S. Program is that continuous interdisciplinary research training coupled with intensive mentoring drive the success of nontraditional scholars in science. The goal is to produce an outstanding and numerically significant corps of minority researchers in the marine and environmental sciences who will bring distinction and much-needed diversity to their fields. The academic component of the R.I.M.E.S. Program occurs at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst (former location was Boston University School of Medicine) and prepares scholars for the scholastic rigor of a doctoral-degree program. This is achieved through intensive mentoring and rigorous tutorials designed to enhance the academic performance of scholars during their junior and senior years. Scholars are selected to the R.I.M.E.S. Program through a rigorous application process designed to identify and recruit only the most motivated individuals. Recruitment focuses on men and women whose personal circumstances made traditional college education difficult or impossible. Thus, recruitment is primarily from three categories of college sophomores: (1) young African-American and Hispanic males from single-parent families (the two most at-risk societal groups in the nation), (2) single mothers whose children are 12 years and older, and (3) married women who deferred their education to raise children. Scholars from these categories attend college in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Thus, they already possess the human qualities that drive the career of a successful scientist: persistence, focus, resourcefulness, guile and tenacity. The academic component of the R.I.M.E.S. Program promotes the utilization of these attributes so that scholars achieve and expect continuous scholastic excellence. The research component of the R.I.M.E.S. Program integrates marine and environmental science and molecular biology through molecular investigations of organisms collected in summer field research on the volcanic island of Montserrat (Northern Antilles). A corps of research mentors, established marine and environmental scientists from several countries, is available to guide the scholars on Montserrat and (by e-mail, phone and fax) after they return to Dr. Jackson's lab. The research projects converge on effects of the environmental stresses exerted on the ecosystem of Montserrat by the eruptions (in 1995 and 1997) and ongoing activity of the Soufriere Hills volcano. The abrupt environmental changes produced by this cataclysm provide a rare opportunity to study ecosystem development at the molecular level. The investigative focus is on molecular processes that have been modified in adaptive response of organisms to sudden environmental changes caused by the volcano.