MRI: Acquisition of growth chambers for global change biology research and research training at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

田纳西大学查塔努加分校(UTC)被授予一个奖项，以加强其积极的教员奖学金、体验式研究生和本科生研究机会，并通过收购受控环境生长室参与社区推广。这一仪器将加强现有的研究和教学/培训议程，共同侧重于全球变化生物学，这些生物学需要精确控制大气二氧化碳、光强度、光周期、相对湿度和/或温度，而这在世界协调委员会的现有资源下目前是不可能的。生物与环境科学系的五名教员将与他们的学生一起开展研究项目，通过涉及植物、动物和微生物系统的实验，调查气候变化对物种范围迁移、群落动态、进化过程和碳循环的潜在影响。化学系的另一位教员和她的学生将利用这种仪器来分离植物中重金属积累的影响。此次收购将是一项新的工具，也将使教师能够开发新的研究领域，并增加他们的研究资金能力。UTC生物与环境科学系的学生入学人数在过去五年中增加了40%以上，而且还在稳步增加。在这个不断发展的系中，新的仪器将使教师能够有效地将更多的研究整合到他们庞大的教学职责中，并进行全年的校园研究，从而提高研究效率。通过学生参与教师指导的研究活动，将培养密切的研究培训关系。研究性培训还将扩大到许多参加UTC高级课程的学生，这些课程包括通过基于探究的假设驱动的研究进行体验式学习。由于UTC学生55%以上是女性，近20%代表种族或少数族裔，这些学生在研究中的参与将通过教授商会的应用而得到扩大。主计长和副主计长还致力于从代表性不足的群体中积极招募学生参加他们的研究活动。在校园之外，这些成长室将用于基于教员研究活动的新的学习模块，这些活动将为当地的K-12外联组织和学校开发，特别是那些影响STEM领域代表性不足的群体的组织和学校。通过将教师研究和教学/培训活动应用于他们的兴趣，成长实验室还将加强与查塔努加市、田纳西州陆军国民警卫队、田纳西州林业部、田纳西州环境和保护部以及美国鱼类和野生动物服务机构的社区和区域研究合作。

An award is made to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) to strengthen its active faculty scholarship, experiential graduate and undergraduate student research opportunities, and involvement in community outreach through the acquisition of controlled-environment growth chambers. This instrumentation will enhance existing research and teaching/training agendas with shared focus on global change biology that require precise control of atmospheric carbon dioxide, light intensity, photoperiod, relative humidity, and/or temperature, which is currently not possible with existing resources at UTC. Five faculty members of the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences will conduct research projects with their students to investigate the potential impacts of climate change on species' range migrations, community dynamics, evolutionary processes, and carbon cycling via experiments involving plant, animal, and microbial systems. An additional faculty colleague from the Department of Chemistry and her students will utilize the instrumentation to isolate the effects of heavy metal accumulation in plants. The acquisition will is new instrumentation also will allow faculty to develop new lines of research and increase their research funding capacity.Student enrollment in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at UTC has increased by more than 40% during the past five years and continues to steadily increase. Within this growing department, the new instrumentation will increase research productivity by enabling faculty to effectively integrate more research into their sizeable teaching duties and conduct year-round campus-based research. Close research training relationships will be fostered through student participation in faculty-directed research activities. Research training also will expand to the many students enrolled in upper-level courses at UTC that include experiential learning through inquiry-based hypothesis- driven research. Because more than 55% UTC students are women and nearly 20% represent racial or ethnic minorities, participation of these students in research will inherently be broadened by teaching applications of the chambers. The PI and co-PIs also are committed to the active recruitment of students from underrepresented groups to participate in their research activities. Beyond campus, the growth chambers will be utilized in new learning modules based on faculty research activities to be developed for local K-12 outreach organizations and schools, especially those that affect underrepresented groups in STEM fields. Through the applicability of faculty research and teaching/training activities to their interests, the growth chambers also will enhance community and regional research collaborations with the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee Army National Guard, Tennessee Division of Forestry, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and United States Fish and Wildlife Service.