THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 20, 1994 TAG: 9409200340
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Norfolk State University received a $10 million grant Monday from the U.S. Department of Energy to expand its small materials research lab into a first-class science center.
The grant is the largest ever for Norfolk State. It will dramatically boost research capabilities at the school, which is primarily a teaching institution.
The money will be used to build a 10,000-square-foot wing to the science building, more than quadrupling the space for the materials research lab; buy high-tech laser equipment; and hire five more professors in the sciences.
But it will also help students. With the grant, NSU will launch summer programs for incoming freshmen interested in science and will offer scholarships for up to 100 science majors. Scholarship students will also get to participate in the research.
``This is a very directed effort to draw more minority students into the science pipeline,'' said Heidi Ries, an associate professor of physics who is associate director of the materials research lab.
The materials research grant is ``enormously important for Norfolk State University and for Virginia higher education,'' said Gordon K. Davies, director of the State Council of Higher Education. ``It's one of the areas of research that has immediate technological applications, and that ties Virginia universities much more closely to economic development.''
Materials research includes the study of crystals, plastics and lasers. It has become a booming field. Labs at NASA Langley and Virginia Tech, for example, have researched ways to discover cracks in airplanes.
At Norfolk State, projects include studying ways to build sturdier aircraft to withstand supersonic speeds and to detect pollutants in the atmosphere with lasers.
Jesse Lewis, vice president for academic affairs, said the grant will help Norfolk State develop more doctoral programs. It is starting its first Ph.D. program, in social work, next year. ``It's going to speed us towards the doctoral degree in physics,'' Lewis said, ``because of the funds that we have and the faculty that we are going to get.''
Norfolk State's materials research lab, housed in a small room in the corner of the Woods Science Building, has six faculty members. The lab's director, George Miller, said he expected to add about five more.
The grant will offer a tantalizing fringe benefit that NSU hopes will lure top researchers: the opportunity to take a year-long sabbatical at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Next year, the summer programs will be open to freshman from four other schools, in addition to NSU: Virginia State University, Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque and the University of Texas-El Paso. Those schools then will develop their own summer programs. The goal is to bring Native Americans and Hispanics, as well as blacks, to the sciences.
Norfolk State officials hope these efforts will attract more top-notch graduate students to their campus. The university this fall began a master's program in chemical physics, focusing on materials research, with seven graduate students.
``We'll have people coming to us,'' Lewis said, ``rather than our going off to some other school to learn what's going on in this area.''
Norfolk State will receive a total of $10.7 million over five years - $9.9 million from the federal government and $800,000 from private sources. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON/
George Miller, left, director of NSU's materials research lab, with,
clockwise from top, science faculty members Kristen Kern and Larry
Mattix, and Heidi Ries, an associate professor of physics who is
associate director of the materials research lab.
KEYWORDS: GRANT AWARD by CNB