Thirty-two first-year students have embarked on a year-long initiation into the world of authentic research as part of a larger project supported in part by a grant to Oklahoma State University from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute through the Science Education Program. The Life-Sciences Freshman Research Scholars (LSFRS) Program is overseen by faculty from the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and Zoology.