Reed awarded several large grants

Reed College was awarded an M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust grant of $363,000 for a physics advanced laboratory. The laboratory will expose junior-level physics majors to the concerns and techniques of modern experimental physics research and facilitate their evolution into autonomous researchers.

The research-based, upper-division, instructional physics laboratory consists of flexible, contemporary, component-based research stations that allow students to create unique lab set-ups and develop independent research skills. New equipment for the stations includes a telescope with a CCD detector that will allow more research in astronomy, an argon ion laser, and a scanning tunneling microscope. Two LabView stations will be added to introduce computer-based data analysis to physics students. This new laboratory will outfit junior physics majors with many of the tools and experiences necessary for the senior thesis.

The instructional laboratory project is directed by associate professor of physics John Essick. Other members of the advanced laboratory project include physics department members John Powell and Robert Reynolds.

Reed received $200,000 from the Steele-Reese Foundation for an endowed scholarship fund to provide financial aid for students from Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Oregon. Preference will be given to students from small and rural communities.

Reed will make special efforts to inform prospective students of these scholarships, and this grant will be used as a challenge to stimulate new gifts. The Steele-Reese Foundation was created by Eleanor Steele-Reese and her husband, Emmet, philanthropists who ran a ranch in Salmon, Idaho. The foundation supported Reed in 1979 with a grant of $200,000 for the Vollum Campus Center.

Marion Underwood, associate professor of psychology, has been granted a National Institutes of Health FIRST award of $350,000 to conduct five years of research on "Anger and Aggression: Effects of Gender and Context." The primary goal of this research is to employ observational methods to explore the development of anger expression in peer interactions during middle childhood and early adolescence and to carefully examine the role of gender and social context.

Underwood, who came to Reed in 1991, holds a Ph.D. (1991) from Duke University. She has received a number of fellowships and awards and has been actively involved in research on anger and aggression for over 10 years.

She has a long list of publications and presentations and is affiliated with the American Psychological Association, the Society for Research in Child Development, and several other academic organizations. Her professional interests include social development, children's peer relationships, and clinical intervention with children and families.

The purpose of the FIRST award is to provide a sufficient period of research support for newly independent, biomedical investigators to initiate their own research and demonstrate the merit of their own research ideas. FIRST awards rarely go to investigators at small colleges such as Reed. Underwood was able to launch her research program in large part because of the energetic assistance of Reed alumni and many student volunteers, and she has demonstrated that it is possible to do large-scale research in a small college setting.

Ronald McClard, Arthur F. Scott Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded a grant of $109,000 from the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute for his project "Mechanistic Probes of Phosphoribosyl-transferases."

This grant enables McClard and senior research associate John Witte, who has been working with McClard since 1985, to sustain their work on understanding how the small-molecule components of DNA and RNA are synthesized in the cell. Cancer cells depend much more on DNA and RNA metabolism than normal cells. Part of McClard and Witte's work involves design of inhibitors, which might lead to anti-cancer agents.

He was also the recipient of a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teaching and Research Fellowship. He has been on the Reed faculty since 1984 and was appointed to the inaugural Arthur F. Scott Professorship of Chemistry this year.

The college received a $300,000 grant from the Collins Foundation to help fund construction of the new campus center.

The Collins Foundation, an independent private foundation, was created in 1947 by Truman W. Collins and other members of the family of E.S. Collins. The mission of the Collins Foundation is to improve, enrich, and give greater expression to the religious, educational, cultural, and scientific endeavors in the state of Oregon and to assist in improving the quality of life in the state.

The Collins Foundation has been consistently supportive of liberal arts colleges in the past, and Reed in particular, through their Retained Interest Contract Challenge Grant and Alumni Challenge program, both designed to increase alumni support.