A knowledgeable Eph writes:

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HMMI) is the largest private sponsor of science research in the country and, by far, the largest benefactor of science research at undergrad colleges. In the five multi-year cycles since 1991, Williams has never missed a major grant: 1991, 1993, 1996, 2000, 2004. In 2004, Williams received the largest four-year grant $1.6 million.

HMMI announced the 48 winners of four-year grants in the next cycle yesterday. Look who is missing.

Wendy Raymond is the HMMI project coordinator at Williams. I have no idea what happened, but for one of the top LACs to not get one of these awards is hard to imagine. Somebody either forgot to submit the proposal, or submitted a godawful proposal, or failed to do the proper follow-up and butt-kissing reporting about the fantastic accomplishments from 2004’s $1.6 million grant.

Got any contacts in the Science Departments? Probably an interesting story.

Indeed. Comments?

Certainly, any non-racists would agree that it is more important for Raymond to spend her time working as Associate Dean for Institutional Diversity (e.g., this) rather than worrying about multi-million dollar grants.

UPDATE: Title corrected. Curious as to what it takes to get your HHMI grant extended? Me too! Consider Swarthmore and Amherst. Both seem to have spent HHMI’s money in useful and productive ways. So, they will get more money to spend. (Anyone with more knowledge about HHMI is welcome to comment.) Williams, on the other hand, seems to have wasted the money in a parody of PC preening.

While Williams College’s HHMI program has successfully initiated student research and curricular partnership with Bennett College, we have been unable to initiate Williams-Bennett faculty research partnerships to date. Multiple factors have contributed to this challenge. First, the physical distance and lack of non-stop flights between Bennett (in Greensboro, NC) and Williams (in Williamstown, MA) prohibit ready travel. Second, since the Williams-HHMI partnership was agreed to without input from the Bennett faculty, winning Bennett faculty buy-in to these opportunities continues to take time and patience. Third, most Bennett faculty members are not research-active, and they are stretched thinly by strenuous teaching responsibilities. Though HHMI funding would provide generous stipend, travel, and lodging funds to make summer research partnerships at Williams possible, this has not been enough to entice faculty members to give up even one or two weeks of their summer. Fourth, two Bennett faculty members considering the program soon left Bennett. Finally, Bennett and Williams liaisons now agree that such partnerships require annual visits to Bennett by one or more Williams faculty members. Though such visits have been made twice in the first three years of the grant, and two Bennett faculty members visited Williams in 2005, this has not been enough.

Glad to see that Professor Raymond is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in such a flawed exercise. Why won’t HMMI give her more money? Can’t they see that Wendy Raymond likes black people?! And shouldn’t that be the primary criteria by which grant money is allocated?

Now, to be fair, it could be that Raymond spent the HMMI money in exactly the way that she proposed four years ago. It could be that she promised pointless PC preening and then made it happen. It could be that no one could have done any better. And it could be that it is just the vagaries of the grant-making process — perhaps conservatives have taken over HHMI? — which have deprived Williams of more money. Perhaps the only thing that Raymond promised four years ago is that she would leverage HMMI money into a reduced teaching load for herself and more diversity gibberish for the College. If so, she has delivered!

But if I were a Williams science faculty member who used to have use HHMI funding to support my students, I would want to know what the heck happened . . .

UPDATE II: Goodness gracious! Here is what Williams proposed to do with HMMI’s money back in 2004. Did Williams (read: Raymond) fail to deliver on what was promised or go off the reservation entirely? [Racist! -- ed. You know where to report me.] Answer: both! Williams/Raymond both failed to promote “collaborative research between Williams faculty and faculty from other institutions” and did not even seem to try to expand “outreach initiatives at local K-6 schools.” Or, even worse, Williams did engage in these outreach initiatives (right?) but then failed to inform HHMI that it had done so.

Someone’s got some splaining to do! [More racism! -- ed.]