The Howard Hughes Medical Institute created four-year HHMI professorships for the specific purpose of encouraging faculty at major research universities to devote more time to teaching undergraduates, and to develop new tools to engage students and enrich their science learning experience.

Graham Walker was among the first 20 HHMI professors selected in 2002 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for this pilot program.

As an HHMI Professor, Professor Walker established an HHMI Education Group, conceptually analogous to his Research Group. Composed of post-doctoral associates and graduate students with a strong interest in teaching, the Education Group is mainly focused on developing curricular materials for teaching College-level Introductory Biology and High School honor and advanced-placement biology.

Several of the projects underway consist of a variety of Web/Internet based personalized problem sets, a Hierarchical Biology Concept Inventory, Flash animations illustrating simple biological concepts, laboratory protocols for high school and college biology classes, and a set of demo laboratory experiments for small group discussions.

These, as well as all other curricular materials developed, will be made freely available as part of MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative. These materials have the potential to affect not only the MIT undergraduate population (around 4000) but also a large population of students and nationally and internationally.