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ABSTRACT In 2015 the West Houston Center for Science & Engineering (WHC), Houston Community College, was awarded funding by the National Science Foundation (DMR) to develop a pilot materials science program, Research Experiences and Exploration in Materials Science (REEMS), focused on introducing materials science to aspiring science & engineering community college students. This multifaceted program provides an opportunity for students from a broad array of interests, backgrounds and ages to gain an appreciation for materials science with respect to their academic and career pursuits. Over the approximately four-year duration of the program, REEMS introduces materials science over the academic year through a voluntary seminar series, and, for a select group of students, participation in summer research experiences at collaborating universities. Academic year activities include conferences with the WHC-REEMS transfer advisor, seminars discussing an overview of materials science, the investigation of the roles of materials science in addressing pressing societal issues, and networking with graduate students, university upper division students, materials research faculty and professionals. This paper will provide an overview of the WHC – REEMS program synergies, impacts and partnership dynamics with participating universities: Rice University, the University of Houston, and the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston. 

Major advances in crop yields are needed in the coming decades. However, plant breeding is currently limited by incremental improvements in quantitative traits that often rely on laborious selection of rare naturally occurring mutations in gene-regulatory regions. Here, we demonstrate that CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing of promoters generates diverse cis-regulatory alleles that provide beneficial quantitative variation for breeding. We devised a simple genetic scheme, which exploits trans-generational heritability of Cas9 activity in heterozygous loss-of-function mutant backgrounds, to rapidly evaluate the phenotypic impact of numerous promoter variants for genes regulating three major productivity traits in tomato: fruit size, inflorescence branching, and plant architecture. Our approach allows immediate selection and fixation of novel alleles in transgene-free plants and fine manipulation of yield components. Beyond a platform to enhance variation for diverse agricultural traits, our findings provide a foundation for dissecting complex relationships between gene-regulatory changes and control of quantitative traits.