Science Leadership Program Wins Major New Grant

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The college’s Science Leadership Program, meant to encourage and mentor women and minority science students, has won a $100,000 grant from the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation, a charitable trust managed by Bank of America in Boston. Grants from the Balfour Foundation are meant to “promote college readiness, access and success for underserved populations,” especially at New England colleges, according to the Foundation’s listing at Bank of America.

The Balfour grant will supplement funding from the federal National Science Foundation, the primary source of funding for the program since its founding in 2007. Past Balfour recipients have included Boston University, Tufts and MIT.  The Balfour Foundation has given almost $10 million in grants to universities and colleges since 2003.

According to chemistry Professor Marc Zimmer, the faculty leader of the program, the grant will be used to fund scholarships over the next two years for future science students at Connecticut College, particularly those from backgrounds traditionally “underrepresented in the sciences.”

The Science Leadership Program seeks diversity of gender and race as well as of economic backgrounds. Thus, need-based financial aid from the college is a requirement for eligibility in the program. While any freshman science student can apply to the program, women, minorities and financial aid recipients are the most likely to be accepted, according to the             program’s website.

In addition to the new scholarships afforded by the Balfour grant, the Science Leadership Program also provides special “mentoring and support,” career counseling and graduate school application assistance. Science Leaders also enroll in a special freshman-year seminar meant to foster a sense of community and to provide an initial basis for completing majors in the sciences.

Science Leaders are also encouraged to enroll in relevant internships, to present and teach at high schools and summer camps in order to encourage science education and to engage in volunteer local community development programs.

The class of 2012 includes the first crop of Science Leaders to graduate. Rabia Nasir ’12, a pre-medical student, chose to attend Conn based on her interest in the program, which she credits with enabling her to “get involved with various research projects, present at regional and national conferences and publish a book chapter as a first author.”

Such opportunities to attend conferences and conduct research are among the most popular and beneficial options afforded to Science Leaders. Samuel Alvarez ’12 notes that in attending science conferences through the program, he was able to “meet many people that I don’t think I would have met if it weren’t for the Science Leaders Program.”

Senior Student Leaders have expressed excitement about the program’s future thanks to the Balfour grant. Alvarez credits Zimmer with much of the program’s success, predicting that he “is going to use the money very well considering that he has done a great job so far with less resources.”

Nasir is also optimistic about the program’s prospects, saying that the Balfour grant puts the Science Leadership Program “one step further on the path to fulfilling its goal of increasing the number of women and minority students pursuing degrees in the sciences.” •