MRI: Acquisition of a Confocal Microscope for Multidisciplinary Resesarch and Teaching at an Undergraduate Liberal Arts College

米德尔伯里学院获得了一个共聚焦显微镜的奖项。该奖项为佛蒙特州中部以外的农村地区提供了获得现代研究技术的关键部分。访问该仪器允许在米德尔伯里学院的学生和教职员工，以及从卡斯尔顿大学和诺维奇大学的同事增强教育和研究机会。在米德尔伯里学院，这种显微镜将用于跨学科的多门课程，包括生物学，神经科学和物理学，以及学生指导的独立研究。这将使近四分之一的学生接触到新的尖端研究技术。在这些学科中，一半的学生是女性，近四分之一是少数民族，超过15%是佩尔助学金获得者或第一代大学生。这笔赠款还支持许多社区外展活动和活动。在米德尔伯里学院周围的社区，免费和减价午餐率高达56%，这表明农村贫困程度很高。这种贫困加上大学入学率低限制了许多学龄儿童获得高质量研究和学习经验的机会。该奖项提供的共聚焦显微镜将使米德尔伯里学院提供几个新的机会，教育和激励当地学龄儿童。该奖项也使米德尔伯里和其他地区的教师追求新的研究途径，这是以前阻碍或不可能的。该奖项支持跨学科教师追求广泛的研究和教育。在物理学中，共聚焦显微镜将允许教师和学生采用一种新的基于吸收的成像技术，使用光热效应进行对比。在神经科学中，现场使用共聚焦显微镜将允许教师和学生研究人员在有成就的教师的指导下，通过多通道，高分辨率荧光免疫组织化学和3D重建来研究神经系统的发育。该奖项还支持有关神经元和神经胶质细胞对机械应力的细胞反应的问题的追求。共聚焦显微镜将允许生物学系研究与C.线虫、大鼠记忆形成和卵母细胞发育。该奖项将通过支持显微镜来提高本科生对高级研究的参与，该显微镜可以快速共定位来自体内和体外标本的多种荧光标记，同时为学生学习提供可访问的用户界面。这将支持受赠方培养下一代科学家和决策者的使命。该奖项为本科生和教师提供了新的研究途径，其结果将在同行评审的期刊上以及地方，国家和国际科学会议上传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

An award was made to Middlebury College to acquire a confocal microscope. This award provides the rural areas outside central Vermont with access to a key piece of modern research technology. Access to this instrument allows for enhanced education and research opportunities for students and faculty members at Middlebury College, as well as for colleagues from Castleton University and Norwich University. At Middlebury College, this microscope will be used in multiple courses across disciplines including biology, neuroscience, and physics, as well as in student-directed independent studies. This will expose almost a fourth of the entire student body to new, cutting-edge research technology. Within these disciplines, half of the students are women, nearly one fourth are of an ethnic minority, and over 15% are Pell grant recipients or first generation college students. This grant also supports a number of community outreach events and activities. Free and reduced lunch rates are as high as 56% in the communities surrounding Middlebury College, indicating substantial rural poverty. This poverty combined with low college-enrollment rates limits the access of many school-age children to high quality research and learning experiences. The confocal microscope made available by this award will enable Middlebury College to offer several new opportunities to educate and inspire local school-age children.This award also enables Middlebury and other regional faculty to pursue novel avenues of research, which were previously hampered or impossible. This award supports faculty across disciplines pursuing a wide range of research and education. In physics, a confocal microscope will allow faculty and students to employ a novel absorption-based imaging technique using the photothermal effect for contrast. In neuroscience, on-site access to a confocal microscope will allow faculty and student researchers mentored by accomplished faculty to investigate the development of the nervous system through multi- channel, high-resolution fluorescent immunohistochemistry and 3D reconstructions. This award also supports the pursuit of questions pertaining to the cellular response in neurons and glia to mechanical stress. The confocal microscope will allow Biology faculty to pursue questions involved in the regulation of vesicle release in C. elegans, memory formation in rats, and oocyte development. This award will improve undergraduate participation in advanced research by supporting a microscope that can rapidly colocalize multiple fluorescent labels from in-vivo and in-vitro specimens while providing an accessible user-interface for student learning. This will support the grantees’ mission to train the next generation of scientists and policy makers. This award enables novel research avenues pursued by undergraduate students and faculty, and results will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journals and at local, national, and international scientific conferences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.