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

一个奖项是由田纳西大学在查塔努加（UTC），以加强其积极的教师奖学金，经验的研究生和本科生的研究机会，并通过收购控制环境的生长室参与社区外展。该仪器将加强现有的研究和教学/培训议程，共同关注全球变化生物学，需要精确控制大气二氧化碳，光照强度，光周期，相对湿度和/或温度，这是目前UTC现有资源无法实现的。生物与环境科学系的五名教师将与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，社区动态，进化过程和碳循环的潜在影响。来自化学系的另一位教师同事和她的学生将利用仪器来隔离植物中重金属积累的影响。此次收购将是新的仪器，也将允许教师开发新的研究领域，并增加他们的研究资金能力。在过去的五年里，UTC生物与环境科学系的学生入学人数增加了40%以上，并继续稳步增长。在这个不断发展的部门，新的仪器将提高研究生产力，使教师能够有效地将更多的研究纳入他们的大规模教学任务，并进行全年的校园研究。密切的研究培训关系将通过学生参与教师指导的研究活动来培养。研究培训也将扩大到许多学生参加了高级课程在UTC，包括经验学习，通过调查为基础的假设驱动的研究。由于超过55%的UTC学生是女性，近20%代表种族或少数民族，这些学生在研究中的参与必然会通过商会的教学应用而扩大。PI和co-PI还致力于积极招募代表性不足的群体的学生参加他们的研究活动。在校园之外，成长室将用于基于教师研究活动的新学习模块，为当地K-12外展组织和学校开发，特别是那些影响STEM领域代表性不足的群体的组织和学校。通过教师的研究和教学/培训活动，以他们的利益的适用性，增长商会也将加强社区和区域研究合作与查塔努加，田纳西州陆军国民警卫队，林业，环境和保护的田纳西州部田纳西州分部，和美国鱼类和野生动物服务的城市。

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.