Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at a Bethesda, Md., meeting of scientists, college administrators, funding agency officials, and others on a sunject that has long been of paramount interest to me: the value of undergraduate research at small liberal arts colleges.

The meeting was part of a two-day program cosponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). The council's 2,000-plus membership, for the most part, is composed of science faculty and administrators at undergraduate schools throughout the United States. It had organized the event with the aim of stimulating dialogue among its own members and representatives of NIH and NSF on the subject of funding opportunities and grant administration policies as they pertain to the smaller colleges and universities.

Earlier this year in The Scientist (Feb. 22, 1993, page 10), CUR's immediate past president, Laura Mays Hoopes,...

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