Hard work pays off. It sounds cliche, but it certainly rings true for Grand Valley State University faculty members Susan Mendoza and Sok Kean Khoo after working hard to get GVSU the honor of offering the Beckman Scholars Program to its students.

The Beckman Scholars Program is a prestigious undergraduate research program offered to institutions, colleges and universities that show excellence in their already-existing research programs. It provides an in-depth research experience for full-time undergraduate students. It focuses on five areas of studies: biology, biochemistry, biomedical sciences, cell and molecular biology and chemistry.

Mendoza, founding director of GVSU’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship (OURS), and Khoo, a distinguished associate professor of molecular genomics in the department of cell and molecular biology, worked together as co-directors to apply to the Beckman Scholars Program. This was GVSU’s second year applying and first year receiving the award.

Traditionally, schools have to be invited to apply for the program by the Beckman Foundation. Although GVSU was not invited to apply, Khoo thought they had met the requirements and took the initiative to reach out and ask for the application materials.

“I actually took the initiative to apply because we never even existed on their list,” she said. “I wrote a nice letter to them and they said, ‘This is the criteria that we need,’ so it is mainly for schools that have quite a lot of research funding.

“I said this is the (funding) we have and this is how much money we bring in and I think we are qualified to be at least invited to it.”

GVSU was a finalist in 2015 but was not an awardee of the program. However, that did not deter Khoo and Mendoza as they received an invitation to apply for the year 2016 and started working on the application right away.

“When we found out that we weren’t given the grant, Sok Kean and I connected, (and) we started collaborating on the design and essentially what that would look like,” Mendoza said. “Our undergraduate research program, holistically, but (also) specifically looking at those particular disciplines, is quite impressive.”

The Beckman Scholars Program provides a research stipend of $21,000 to students for a 15-month research program. The students will be paired with a faculty mentor. Those students interested in applying are encouraged to look at the mentors and their areas of studies to make sure there is an area they are interested in researching.

“The Beckman Scholars Program is intended to provide funding, so financial support, but also a climate that nurtures the Beckman Scholars’ aspirations to go into research and professional practice, whether that’s in academia, public service, or going on to industry,” Mendoza said.

In order for students to be able to succeed in pursuing future research experiences, Mendoza said there are three components the Beckman Scholars Program offers to students. The first is the immersive nature of the program, providing students 15 months of an in-depth research experience. The second component is the program’s faculty mentors.

“Each student will have a mentoring team that will have three folks,” Mendoza said. “That includes their own mentor, another faculty member from the Beckman Scholars Program who is outside of their discipline (and) you’ll also have an administrator with specific expertise.”

The third component of the program is the exposure students get. Mendoza said they will have opportunities to talk with professionals on campus to learn about their work and the path they might take.

“The third piece is having exposure to diverse narratives of success,” she said. “So when we have students who are starting to look at graduate school and Ph.D. programs, oftentimes they have a perception of what that path might look like. But we want to broaden that and deepen that.”

Khoo, in addition to being a co-director of the program, was chosen as one of the 12 faculty mentors for the program. She said the commitment is most intense during the summer months.

“It’s at least 400 hours for 10 weeks, that means 40 hours per week, that means you are not supposed to have another job,” she said. “So two summers, this summer to next summer, and in between you have courses, so it is 10 hours a week (during the school year).”

To select the faculty mentors, there was a traditional nomination process which included self-nominations or nominations of other faculty members.

“There was a number of colleagues who really looked at the publication records, internal and external funding, looked at how many students they mentored and where those students went,” Mendoza said. “We tried to choose a very diverse pool (and) also a diversity of discipline (and) diversity of background.”

As for the schools selected to apply, Sarah Marinkovich, the Beckman Scholars Program administrator at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, said schools are invited based on their previous work with research.

“The Beckman Scholars Program is about awarding excellence,” she said. “We’re not necessarily looking to help build programs, but we’re looking to help award excellent programs and to establish some type of sustainability for excellence in undergraduate research at the institutions that are awarded.”

Marinkovich said depending on the year, approximately 150 schools are invited to apply and about 80 institutions submit invitations.

She also said having schools reach out to the foundation is not uncommon.

“That’s one way institutions come about getting on our list,” Marinkovich said. “Its hard for us to offer invitations to all of the institutions out there that are deserving of one. If we haven’t sought them out, then a lot of institutions come to us and we ask them to offer us a report on why they think they would be a good fit for an invitation to the Beckman Scholars Program and the foundation then reviews that information and considers it for the invitation process.”

When picking what schools are awarded the program, there is another set of criteria the Beckman Foundation looks at when narrowing down many schools to just a few.

“It comes down to the institution’s commitment to undergraduate research, the type of faculty and facilities they have available and the program and departments they are putting forth,” Marinkovich said. “(Also) the type of funding that exists in their programs, the type of support that exists there, so again, we’re just looking for those excellent programs to award.”

Catrina Bryant, programs manager at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, explained when the foundation started and how it came to be. She said Arnold Beckman and his wife, Mabel Beckman, started the foundation in 1977.

“Initially, they had thought it was not going to be a foundation (in) perpetuity, and with that thought they made huge capital (grants to existing) institutions and those became known as the Beckman Institutes,” she said. However, when Mabel Beckman passed away, Arnold Beckman had to decide what he wanted to do with the money.

“He decided he wanted the foundation to live (on) in perpetuity and so he created an endowment with very direct instructions to his board,” Bryant said. “His mission is to fund young scientists in the biological, chemical and life sciences, (broadly interpreted). Any of our programs that are developed have to meet those parameters.”

Being able to offer the Beckman Scholars Program is a big bonus not only for GVSU students, but also for the university, Mendoza said.

“It’s wonderful, it’s an incredible validation of all of the hard word the faculty have done,” she said. “Sok Kean and I wrote it up, we did the design, we put that effort in, but it’s really a reflection of the faculty and their dedication.”

Other schools that were awardees of the program were Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brigham Young University, Northwestern University, Pomona College, Tufts University, University of Colorado- Boulder, University of San Diego, Villanova University and Wellesley College. GVSU was the only masters large on the award list.

If students don’t find a topic that suits their interests through the Beckman Scholars Program, Mendoza encourages students to look at other opportunities available to them through the OURS. 

The deadline for interested students who wish to apply to be a recipient of the grant is Wednesday, Feb. 22. Visit www.gvsu.edu/ours/beckman-scholars-program-845.htm for more information about the program and the application process.