EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

The Collaboratorium described in this report presents a vision of a unique and powerful virtual laboratory that will create a national resource for magnetic resonance-related science, education and technology. At the heart of this Collaboratorium is the marriage of science, education and research. It will provide extraordinary learning opportunities for the scientific community, the general public, and students/scholars from across the spectrum of education-scientists and technicians, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students along with programs to address public awareness and K-12 education. The NMRC will provide the impetus, links and resources to create a center where research and learning are united; advancing the frontiers of science; recruiting and educating future scientists, engineers, and technicians; and promoting scientific literacy for all students, especially those presently under-represented in the sciences.

Never before will so many NMR experts be so closely linked as in this Collaboratorium. Through Sector siting with many of the top institutions throughout the nation, excellent undergraduates, graduates and postdoctoral fellows will naturally be affiliated with the Collaboratorium. Consequently, the opportunities for training the next generation of NMR specialists from areas of spin physics to hardware development, from structural refinement to dynamics characterization, from molecular diffusion to microimaging, etc. will be unsurpassed. With the collective and comprehensive range of expertise there will be a unique ability to create and manage a large set of teaching tools in an interactive Internet environment. In addition to traditional instructional material, the NMR Internet resource will include interactive "hands on" material such as powerful simulation programs like GAMMA (a General Approach to Magnetic resonance Mathematical Analysis), NMR processing and analysis software, and structural modeling packages. Moreover, workshops on emerging technologies and application frontiers will be sponsored by the Collaboratorium. The Collaboratorium will also sponsor a minority fellowship program at the undergraduate and graduate student level.

As NMR technology develops and the application science expands the demands for training and education also increase. A major goal of this Collaboratorium is to provide access for the latent user community to the world's highest field NMR instrumentation. In so doing, bring together the most important scientific problems with the best technology and leading experts in NMR. As described in the Collaboratorium section communication across disciplinary boundaries is a major challenge, but it also epitomizes the essence of this "virtual laboratory" where notebooks are shared across the Internet and instrument access can be performed remotely. For these application scientists basic training on instrument operations as well as processing and analysis will be necessary. Web-based training programs utilizing remote access instrumentation and spectrometer simulators will be available. Web-based introductory NMR courses will also be developed and implemented in an integrated fashion so that "virtual spectroscopy" can be done in a meaningful way. Workshops on NMR application science will be held to further develop the science and advertise the NMR capabilities beyond the NMR community.

The Collaboratorium represents a great opportunity to reach out to potential scientists, to stimulate interest and encourage a new generation of scientists. For example, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory engages over 15,000 K-12 students annually through its outreach efforts, leads curriculum development efforts through collaborations with teachers, researchers, and students, and provides an extensive educational website. The University of Pennsylvania provides a variety of teacher institutes and graduate programs led by its Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has a variety of educational programs and resources including Stars On-Line, an interactive website where students interface with astronomers, and Science Alive. The NMRC will move beyond these existing programs through the collaboration of the Sectors, leading to new programs and new solutions to promote scientific literacy. The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996) provides a vision of science education which will enable the nation to achieve the goal of scientific literacy for all students. This vision requires that all members of the "extended system" work toward science and mathematics classroom reform. Although education is often perceived by the public as being done in schools exclusively, "it also extends to those outside the system who have an influence on science education including students, parents, scientists, engineers, buisnesspeople, taxpayers, legislators and other public officials" (National Research Council, 1996, p.9). The NMRC will provide a model for approaching this goal.