The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Cal State Fullerton is home to the W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Molecular Structure (CMolS), a comprehensive X-ray diffraction facility and computational laboratory serving the 23 campuses of the CSU system as a core facility for the California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB). Dedicated to molecular structure determination and analysis using single crystal x-ray diffraction methods and computational modeling, CMolS was the first comprehensive x-ray diffraction and computational facility to be located at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution (PUI), with leading edge capabilities for both small and macromolecular structure determination and analysis at low temperature. Moreover, before full implementation of U.S. Department of Energy collaboratory projects, CMolS pioneered the implementation of remote instrumentation access at PUIs, putting instruments online to the CSU in 1997, and exemplifying the phrase ‘collaboratory’ or ‘center without walls’. CMolS now also facilitates PUI faculty and student remote access to beamlines at major synchrotrons, including the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven.
Modern crystallography provides enabling technology, methodology, and information, and the bounty of knowledge gained from analysis of its structures is a key underpinning of modern science and technology. It is essential that undergraduates understand and appreciate the origins of molecular structural information and the biological, chemical, and physical implications derived from this information. Furthermore, crystallography is an ideal topic for faculty to embrace and include within the context of undergraduate courses in physical and life sciences. Crystallography underscores the importance of interdisciplinary science, affecting all our lives from advances in biosciences up to space-age high-tech materials development. Crystallography excites and stimulates a broad spectrum of students, and affords the opportunity to help students recognize the broader applicability of their skills.
Recognizing the opportunity to communicate to the broader scientific community the research opportunities afforded by crystallography, as well as the value of crystallographic information, CMolS has been extremely productive and effective by contributing to and enhancing undergraduate research and education. The Center has played a critical role in advancing faculty research, supervising Masters theses, and working with undergraduates from throughout the CSU and other local universities on interesting and challenging structural problems. These projects have been published with undergraduate co-authors in prominent journals. In addition, CMolS has developed and fully implemented, both locally and at other campuses, crystallography experiments for undergraduate laboratories in both chemistry and biochemistry. Work at CMolS has also led to submission of a number of interdisciplinary grant proposals to the NIH, NSF and PRF from investigators located at several PUIs. To train faculty, CMolS has hosted several highly successful professional development workshops, funded by CSUPERB and the NSF: Molecular Modeling (a workshop for secondary science teachers in Orange County), Elements of Structure-Based Drug Design, Crystallography for Chemists, and Modern Biomolecular Crystallography. These workshops capitalize on remote access technology.
In 2005, CMolS formed a cyber-enabled instrumentation consortium with the
four other PUI crystallography core facilities in the U.S., the STaRBURSTT-CDC.
The goals of the “Science Teaching and Research Bring Undergraduate Research
Strengths Through Technology” CyberDiffraction Consortium are directed towards
systematically and significantly changing the research and educational cultures
at PUIs, with the value added benefits from this change flowing to the nation's
major research universities, government laboratories, industry and teachers of
science through the currency of our students. The effort has a series of
interlinked and naturally synergetic components that will facilitate a major and
simultaneous increase in the depth of undergraduate research and educational
experiences. STaRBURSTT members include PUIs, Community Colleges, Liberal Arts
Colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving
Institutions and Tribal Colleges.