THE PROJECT The Community of Scholars offers a small group of freshmen and sophomores the unique opportunity to set aside their textbooks and get to the bench. The Community of Scholars program puts these students at the sides of upperclassmen, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty and encourages them to do the one thing they have been trying hardest to avoid since they arrived at Vanderbilt - make mistakes. Our Philosophy Our Commitment

TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES: Understanding the techniques behind the science As Dr. Kathy Friedman put it, for students who have never been in the lab, many genetic techniques are very abstract concepts. So it is not surprising that students who have been in the lab fare far better in science classes because they are not struggling with every little concept, but are able to look at the big picture. By working with the students at the bench, they are able to learn much more about what goes into discovering and proving the scientific facts that they read about in textbooks.

Community of Scholars Group Activities -We kicked off the summer with a mentoring workshop led by Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching to learn how to be effective mentors. Click here for some pictures, and for more information what happened in the mentoring workshop click here. -Next we invited everyone to a fun-filled retreat at Montgomery Bell State Park. Pictures coming soon! -In the meantime, click here for some of the presentations on research given at the retreat. -We also had a big bowling party with a great turn out! Pictures coming soon!

Community of Scholars Journal Clubs To find out more about our Journal Clubs, click here. -Tuesday, June 14th: "Junction Adhesion Molecule is a Receptor for Reovirus" Presented by Tim Peters -Tuesday, June 21st: "Yeast Ku as a Regulator of Chromosomal DNA End Structure" Presented by Kathy Friedman and Hong Ji -Tuesday, June 28th: "A Conformational Switch Controls the DNA Cleavage Activity of Lambda Integrase" Presented by Eric Warren and Mike Miller -Tuesday, July 12th: "The Comings and Goings of Nucleotide Excision Repair Factors on Damaged DNA." Presented by Vitaly Klimovich and Chris Bunick -Thursday, July 14th: Invited Speaker- Raymund Wellinger "The generation of proper constitutive G-tails on yeast telomeres is dependent on the MRX complex" -Tuesday, July 19th: "Direct Activation of ATM Protein Kinase by the MRN Complex" and "ATM Activation by DNA Double-Strand Breaks through the MRN Complex" Presented by Joe Gomez and Hanjian Liu -Tuesday, July 26th: "A dimerized coiled-coil domain and an adjoining part of geminin interact with two sites on Cdt1 for replication inhibition" Presented by Steve Gray and Lawrence Small -Thursday, August 4th: HHMI Symposium- Featuring three world renowned scientists: Tom Ellenberger: "Structural Enzymology of the Repair Endonuclease XPF-ERCC1." Tanya Paull: “Initiation of DNA damage-induced ATM signaling through the MRN complex.” and Anindya Dutta: Utilizing the sequence of the human genome for the study of DNA replication and cell proliferation." To find out about everything that happened at the symposium, click one of the following links to download the Symposim Booklet: [PDF 4.4MB] [Word 5.3MB]

Who are the members and what are their roles? Click here to learn more about the Post Docs involved. Click here to meet our Graduate Students serving as mentors. Meet our Undergraduate Junior Mentors here. And last but certainly not least are our Interns.

Links to Publications from Participating Labs Stucture of docking surface of RPA and T-antigen (NSMB 2005) A.I. Arunkumar, V. Klimovich*, X. Jiang*, R.D. Ott*, L. Mizoue, E. Fanning* and W.J. Chazin*. "Insights into RPA32 C-terminal domain-mediated assembly of the simian virus 40 replisome." Nature Structural Molecular Biology12, 332-339 (2005). Eichman BF*, Fanning E.* The power of pumping together; deconstructing the engine of a DNA replication machine. Cell, 119(1), 3-4, (2004). [Pubmed]* denotes a member or former member of the HHMI CoS.

Junior Mentor Geoff explaining to Intern Vinod about the precuations to take when running an agarose gel.

REFLECTIONS ON THE MOTIVATION, PROCESS, AND PRODUCT The following pictures were drawn by the same student before and after their participation in the Community of Scholars. See how the complexity has increased in the "after" picture. It is obvious the student came to better understand and appreciate the lab environment due to this program.        On the things that surprised you about the program: I thought "real scientists" were brilliant and that I didn't have what it takes to be one. I've learned that they are just normal people who happen to really like science; people just like me.

Outreach and Recruiting In addition to the poster that is posted around campus and seen here, we also have this website as well as the original at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/hhmi and the program is introduced to freshmen in their introductory biology classes. About one-half of the people that apply are accepted and most of those are upcoming sophomores. Exceptions are sometimes made as upcoming juniors have been selected as well as graduating High School Seniors.

ANYTHING ELSE? To see more pictures of everything that goes on around the labs involved in the HHMI Community of Scholars click here. Click here to see what everyone who was in the program is up to now. To see the presentation given at the AAAS meeting, click here. Click on the following links for abstracts of the presentations Vitaly and Ellen gave at CSH this fall. Click here to fill out the SURE Student Survey. The New 2006 Application is online here.

Frequently Asked Questions What is the Community of Scholars? Can I continue to work in a laboratory after the summer? Who is eligible? How long is the program? What are the dates of the program? How do I apply? Where can I get more information? Participating Faculty If I decide research interests me, what could I do after Undergraduate Studies? What is the difference between PhD, MD and MD/PhD programs? How much does Graduate School cost and how long does it take? What happens after graduate school?