ST. MARY’S CITY — Twenty-four St. Mary’s College of Maryland students will get to work with some of the country’s most advanced brain-mapping tools, including two weeks in Seattle, under a $495,296 grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The three-year award went to Associate Professor of Neuroscience Sarah Latchney, the college announced Oct. 22. It is only the third NIH award in the college’s history, according to the release, and it arrives as St. Mary’s reports its fastest start yet to a year of outside funding: more than $1 million in external awards in the first three months of fiscal 2027.
That three-month total already equals 69% of everything the college brought in from outside sources in all of fiscal 2026.
A course built around open brain data
Latchney’s project creates a course-based undergraduate research experience, a class in which students do real research rather than scripted lab exercises. It draws on resources from the NIH’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a national effort to map and understand the human brain, and sets up a new partnership with the Allen Institute in Seattle, which publishes large, open-access datasets on brain cell types.
The course runs in three stages, according to the college:
- Foundational instruction on campus at St. Mary’s City.
- A two-week study tour at the Allen Institute.
- A capstone research project.
Latchney is also designing the course so other colleges with limited resources can adapt it, which the college says could widen its reach well beyond Southern Maryland.
“At an undergraduate institution like St. Mary’s, opportunities for students to engage directly in research experiences can be transformative and shape their decisions about pursuing graduate study or careers in science,” Latchney said in the release. She said working with Allen Institute scientists will show students how sharing data and tools across the scientific community speeds up discovery.
Provost Katherine Gantz said the project pairs faculty scholarship with student opportunity, giving students a chance to “tackle real-world neuroscientific questions alongside leading experts.”
More proposals, more student jobs
The college, which enrolls about 1,650 students, has been steadily building its grant work. Over the past three years it submitted 97 proposals and won 61 awards, and its proposal submissions have risen 31% over five years, according to the release. Forty-nine students currently hold jobs funded by sponsored research awards.
Recent awards span biomedical research, STEM education, archaeology, environmental stewardship, sustainable agriculture and the arts. Funders include the National Science Foundation, the National Park Service, the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Maryland Historical Trust, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Maryland State Arts Council and the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Patuxent River.
The grant is the second piece of academic news from the college this month, after its Master of Arts in Teaching program earned its first national accreditation.
