Joint venture opens JHU labs to Notre Dame
Hopkins and the nearby College of Notre Dame signed off on a new deal last week, the Sister Alma McNicholas Women Scientists Program, formalizing a two-year renewable program that will offer three promising Notre Dame science-major undergraduates the chance to work during either the summer or academic school year as trainees with choice JHMI laboratories and researchers.
The program, named for a late Notre Dame biology professor whose estate provides the program's funding, will offer its participants a year-long assignment to a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine laboratory and faculty mentor. Selection of laboratories is currently underway, as are Notre Dame student applications; the year-long program schedule will begin its premier assignments this upcoming spring semester.
The McNicholas Program codifies a collaboration between Notre Dame and Hopkins that began in 2005. Peter Hoffman, chair of the biology department at Notre Dame, and several JHMI researchers and administrators joined forces to pair interested and promising Notre Dame students with labs looking for student work.
Due to the lack of funding, growth of the venture has been delayed until now. Before the institution of the McNicholas program, the admissions and placement process was relatively informal. News of the program and its two to three annual participating students was mass-emailed to the Hopkins faculty list. Given the additional McNicholas program's stipend of a $200 supply fund for each student, Catherine Will, who oversees lab recruitment and placement for both the summer and academic year programs, is enthusiastic about the program. "The placement process is so much easier, the news of the stipends got a very enthusiastic response out of the faculty. Professors are more than eager to have such talent in their labs without having to worry about the serious problem of where to find funding to cover the additional expenses. Most labs in the program are funded with NIH [National Institutes of Health] grants, and the restrictions that come with that money rarely allow funds to pay for a student trainee," Will said.
The program, named for a late Notre Dame biology professor whose estate provides the program's funding, will offer its participants a year-long assignment to a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine laboratory and faculty mentor. Selection of laboratories is currently underway, as are Notre Dame student applications; the year-long program schedule will begin its premier assignments this upcoming spring semester.
The McNicholas Program codifies a collaboration between Notre Dame and Hopkins that began in 2005. Peter Hoffman, chair of the biology department at Notre Dame, and several JHMI researchers and administrators joined forces to pair interested and promising Notre Dame students with labs looking for student work.
Due to the lack of funding, growth of the venture has been delayed until now. Before the institution of the McNicholas program, the admissions and placement process was relatively informal. News of the program and its two to three annual participating students was mass-emailed to the Hopkins faculty list. Given the additional McNicholas program's stipend of a $200 supply fund for each student, Catherine Will, who oversees lab recruitment and placement for both the summer and academic year programs, is enthusiastic about the program. "The placement process is so much easier, the news of the stipends got a very enthusiastic response out of the faculty. Professors are more than eager to have such talent in their labs without having to worry about the serious problem of where to find funding to cover the additional expenses. Most labs in the program are funded with NIH [National Institutes of Health] grants, and the restrictions that come with that money rarely allow funds to pay for a student trainee," Will said.
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