Department of Biology Annual Newsletter 2000
Maureen Diggins, Department Chair Gil Blankespoor Nola Bormann Deb Carlson Lee Johnson Steve Matzner Val Olness Craig Spencer Mike Wanous
Greetings to all of you. It is a beautiful June day. I am holding up the Newsletter since I am the last to write, but Cheryl is being very kind about it. Right now I am sitting with my husband, H.L., as he recovers from surgery on his lower spine. He has had his lumbar vertebrae fused from L2 to the sacrum, so the recovery will be long and hard. It is being eased by some excellent physicians, nurses, and physical therapists, many of whom are Augie alums!
It has been a good year in the Biology Department. We certainly miss Lansing Prescott and Larry Tieszen, both of whom have been granted emeritus status. I have just completed my first year as department head, a task made easy by a super group of faculty and the best secretary anyone could ever hope for. We are delighted to have Steve Matzner (plant ecology and plant physiology) and Nola Bormann (microbiology and biochemistry) with us as the newest faculty members. They bring loads of talent and enthusiasm. Deb Carlson received tenure this year and was promoted to associate professor! She says she is now "middle faculty" but not middle aged. Julia Spiry, one of our two great faculty associates, will be leaving us after several years. Her husband Bill has a great new job in Springfield, Oregon, near Eugene. The proximity to the University of Oregon will be wonderful for Julia, but we will miss her terribly! On a positive note, Ann Vogelmann will be rejoining us as a part-time faculty associate. Ann has a Ph.D. in botany and will be a great addition to our group.
We continue to work on the problem of obesity and infertility with our chubby lethal yellow mice. We are funded by a grant from the Ethel Austin Martin Foundation, in association with our super colleague, Nels Granholm, of SDSU. We have been shifting from radioimmunoassays to enzyme-linked immunoassays as we look at various hormone levels in the serum. I have two wonderful students with me this summer: Michelle Cederberg from Rapid City and Travis Dierks from Mitchell. Both will be seniors in the fall. Michelle will have to leave us in July for Australia. She will be there the rest of the summer and the fall semester winter and spring in Australia) - lucky gal!
There are six faculty here full time this summer, and we have a total of twelve students funded by our various research grants. Two of the students are funded by a generous grant from Doug and Gaye Bell! In addition, we have two outstanding lab assistants working for us all summer.
We graduated a really splendid group of seniors this spring who are going on to all sorts of endeavors; graduate school, medical school, PT programs, teaching, etc. Lee, Steve, and I had a marvelous group of freshmen in second semester intro biology. So we continue to get truly outstanding students, many of them sent by you, our alums. Please continue to encourage these great young people to come to us, and please come back to visit whenever possible. We are always so happy to see you. Take care and God bless!
Maureen Diggins
diggins@inst.augie.edu
It's newsletter paragraph time again. It's a pleasure to put these together because we know that the annual departmental newsletter is much read and much appreciated by departmental graduates.
We had a good year in the Department again this past year. We continue to have lots of majors who both are very good students and are very nice young people. It's a joy to work together with these young people in the study of biology. This past year marked my 30th year as a member of the Department of Biology and I find myself becoming increasingly reflective. One of my reflections is that over these 30 years interpersonal relationships among staff members have been extraordinarily good. Only very rarely have there been incidents of anger and tension among staff members. I think that is really quite amazing. I also frequently reflect on the changes that have taken place in the Department, in recent years, especially as regarding staff. I want you to know that some really fine people have joined the Department in recent years. These people hold every promise of maintaining the Department's reputation of excellence in teaching and research.
Let me finish my contribution with a couple of sentences about my own professional and personal life. My teaching assignment remained unchanged from what it has been for a number of years now. I taught both majors and non-majors introductory-level biology and also taught my advanced-level course in ornithology. My research efforts continue to focus on finding ways to control invasive smooth bromegrass in tallgrass prairie remnants. I had two month-long off-campus teaching experiences. Both involved field courses sponsored by the Au Sable Environmental Institute. One of the courses was offered in northern Michigan and the other in Kenya, East Africa. My wife, Jan, and I continue to have the privilege of having our children and grandchildren live in Sioux Falls. We do lots of child sitting and attend lots of children's sports events, recitals, concerts, etc.
God bless each one of you.
Gil Blankespoor
blank@inst.augie.edu
Hello from the newest faculty member and a fellow alum (1987)! The department has definitely changed since I last roamed the halls of Gilbert Science Center with several new faces present among the familiar ones! Since my days as an undergrad, it has always been my career goal to teach at a small liberal arts college and I consider myself very fortunate to be back at Augie and working with such talented colleagues. For those of you who don't know me, let me give you a brief background before I talk about my first year back in South Dakota! I grew up on a farm by Ellsworth, Minnesota and met my future husband, Scott Bormann, here at Augie. After graduation, I went to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. My Ph.D. work focused on the function of virulence genes in group A streptococci. After completing my Ph.D., I taught microbiology and several other biology courses at St. John's University in Collegeville and the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul. While I have always wanted to get a full-time position teaching, I realized that spending time in the "real world" of industry would broaden my experience and also make me a better mentor to future students. So right before coming back to Augie, I spent a couple of years working in the biotech QC department of R&D systems, in Minneapolis.
This last year has been a very busy one, full of many new experiences and challenges. Mental health experts suggest you should only have one major life change at a time. While I agree that probably is the best, sometimes the timing of things are not completely under your control. During July and August, I had a baby, I moved to Sioux Falls, and I started a new job here at Augie. To add to the chaos, my husband didn't move until December and our new house is still undergoing major remodeling. Somehow, I managed to survive my first year and retain my sanity (I think)! Our new son, Trevor, is now a very mobile 10 month old and eager to explore new things! While I don't think it is possible to replace Lansing, my teaching duties include the courses he used to teach. In addition to biochemistry and microbiology 250 and 344, I also taught biology 121 with Dr. Matzner. Being able to work with enthusiastic, quality students is definitely one of the big advantages to teaching at Augie. I am looking forward to working with two students, Jill Kapplinger and Jason Olinger, on a summer research project. We will be looking at iron acquisition in streptococcal species that cause bovine mastitis.
It really has been a great year for me and my family. Since Scott grew up in Sioux Falls, most of our relatives live in the area. Having grandpa and grandma and uncles and aunts living close by is great for Trevor (and also Mom and Dad)! I am looking forward to my summer research work and also the coming fall semester. In closing, I would like to pass on a philosophy that helped me survive my first year back and might be useful in your lives as well: Don't sweat the small stuff, handle what you can and let God handle the rest!
Nola Bormann
bormann@inst.augie.edu
Each year there are more of you moving onto wonderful paths of adventure and discovery. The class of 2000 was an outstanding one. I am so proud of the many places our graduates are going; programs, jobs and service positions. Congratulations again to all of you!
This has been an incredibly busy and rewarding year. This summer the excitement will continue. We are fortunate to have many students working on research projects in the Biology Department thanks to Federal funding, the Augustana Research and Artist Fund and private gifts from alumni. Jenny Kapplinger (2002) will be working with me on frog herpesvirus DNA which may play a role in causing frog cancer, using our new DNA sequencing equipment!
Sara Horner (2000) presented our final poster on the deformed frogs of Minnesota at the Minnesota Academy of Sciences meeting in April. We (Sara, Angela Reister (1998), and I) should have a paper on those frogs published soon.
During the January Interim, Craig and I took a group of 18 students to the Florida Keys for a week as part of our Ecosystems of South Florida course. The students spent hours at Augie preparing for the "field trip" and were able to get the most out of our time in Florida. We were fortunate in having outstanding guides, beautiful weather, cooperative ocean currents and friendly sharks. We will certainly be repeating this course!
I will be off to Orlando in late June for a national meeting of pre-health professions advisors. My husband, Dan, and son, Jack, will be joining me for a few days in Disneyworld after the meeting ends. (It shouldn't be too crowded over the Fourth of July, should it?)
I am so thankful for our students. Each spring I have to say good-bye to a wonderful group of students. But each fall I get to meet a whole new group of bright faces and have the privilege of watching them blossom. Our new and returning students are very bright and talented. Many of these students are your children–thank you for sharing them with us!
May your families be happy and healthy. Please stop by and say hi when you're in town, or send a quick e-mail message. Let us help celebrate your accomplishments!
Always in frogs,
Deb Carlson
dcarlson@inst.augie.edu
My year began and continued under a dreadful pall because of the death of my niece, Eva Wahlstrom, at age nineteen in a car accident last July. Eva was all that you could hope for in a young person. She was smart, talented, witty and funny, beautiful, and very caring. She also had very successfully completed her first year as a biology major in this Department and was one of the Froiland Scholars, the top freshman biology students. It's still terribly hard to think that we'll never know what she would have accomplished with all of those gifts: medicine, teaching, research, writing - they all interested her. And imagine the huge hole this leaves in her parents' lives. I'm grateful that I had a chance to get to know Eva much better while she was a student here and to see how well she and Augustana suited each other. We're pleased that we've been able to start a memorial scholarship fund and that it has grown almost to the point where we will be able to begin to give an annual scholarship in her name.
This year nobody left the Department so here's some good news about the people who are here. Nola Bormann, who joined us most recently has already become a well-regarded microbiology and biochemistry teacher and she has plans to involve students in her research on iron metabolism in bacterial pathogenesis, beginning this summer. It was great to hear that our other very recent addition Steve Matzner obtained a $75,000. USDA grant to study plant water stress responses along with some of our students. It also should be mentioned that Jetty Duffy-Matzner, a Chemistry faculty member and Steve's wife, just received a $75,000. NSF Young Investigator Award to support her research with Augustana students in organic chemistry. Speaking of other departments, John Larkin in the Physics Department has his optics equipment set up and will be at work with a student colleague on biologically relevant photochemistry research this summer. Back to our Department, I can say that people who have been here a bit or a lot(!) longer also continue doing the things that make this a very strong department. We never promise to make it simple and easy for students, but we strive to keep it interesting and challenging, and to give the advice and support students need to come as close to fulfilling their potential as their motivation allows. Check out the list of some of the successes of this year's particularly strong group of graduating majors! In addition to those going on to graduate or professional schools, a number are going directly to work in diverse fields. They're bright, they've learned how to work with focus and concentration, and they're ready to move on to new challenges at work or in further education.
My teaching was a bit different this year because I was involved in the non-majors course (Biol. 110) last fall. There, we had the very challenging and largely enjoyable task of sharing enthusiasm for Biology with people whose majors range across the campus spectrum. Some were very frankly less than enthusiastic about the study of science in any form, but it was a generally good time and I look forward to doing it again this Fall term. My other courses continue as they have been and my summer workshop at U. Maine is on again for June, as it has been since 1992. That is always a challenge because the participants are college and university faculty members from across the US and Canada (and Germany this year!).
My research continues on pillbugs (with Jared Likness) and on sea urchins (with Jenny Kapplinger) here, and on edible urchins in Maine. There also are dreams of a return to sunny Australia and even of some urchin research above the Arctic Circle in Norway, in winter darkness. Those are starkly contrasting choices for January.
Two alums were among our Departmental seminar speakers this semester. Ken Madison was here with us in the Fall and Nola Bormann who also is an alum gave her first seminar as a member of the Department. These were special alumni contacts, and we also enjoyed both scheduled and drop-in visits from a number of Departmental alums this year. Please stop to see us whenever you come by this way or e-mail or write when you have time.
Lee Johnson
johnson@inst.augie.edu
It has been a busy year. Jetty and I are unexpectedly expecting. Life is full of surprises; this one will come in October. Our oldest son will be starting kindergarten next year (how time flies). Our second son had surgery to replace the leads on his pacemaker. All went well; thanks to the great care of the doctors and nurses at Sioux Valley.
Jetty (still teaching in Chemistry) and I both received word that our grants are being recommended for funding. Mine is a United States Department of Agriculture "Seed" grant and Jetty's is a National Science Foundation Powre Grant (both are designed to help new faculty get started). The amount of the grants is identical, which helps in the equality of the sexes in our family. The USDA Seed grant will focus on environmental effects on drought tolerance in beans. I started this research last summer using ARAF (Augustana Research and Artist Fund) money, and was able to use the preliminary results for my USDA grant.
I will be supported again this summer on an ARAF grant, comparing the drought tolerance of selected native species to leafy spurge. Ellen Holste will be working full time for 8 weeks this summer supported through ARAF and from a gift by Doug and Gaye Bell. Jeremiah Dibley ('99) and Jennifer Mehrens ('99) are both working on their Master's in Science Education through Augustana. As part of their requirements they have to complete a research-style independent project. They are both working on aspects of drought tolerance in leafy spurge. This next fall will be the first time that I am not teaching a new class. I am very excited! In addition to teaching the ecology and plant-related sections in the introductory biology classes (120, 121), I have taught Plant Physiology, Plant Ecology, and Environmental Science. I look forward to refining some of these classes in the next year.
As soon as I finish my newsletter submission I get to go out to my field site (one of the best parts of being an ecologist). So far this year however, I estimate that I have picked up 30-40 ticks (OK, that part isn't so great), but so far none have become embedded (YEA).
Best wishes,
Steve Matzner
matzner@inst.augie.edu
First Edition of the New Millennium Science Education Update! (under the gun as usual - the new millennium has not provided more time it seems)
My quote for the new millennium is:
Question! Question! Question!
Those who do not stop asking silly questions become scientists
Leon Lederman
Val Olness
olness@inst.augie.edu
We had a TERRIBLE winter in SD this year. No snow, no igloos, no x-c skiing - boring... Hope you had better luck where you are living. BUT, it was a good year to choose NOT to teach a winter ecology course during Interim. Instead, Deb Carlson and I took 18 Bio majors to the Florida Keys to study coral reefs, mangroves, and the Everglades. It was a great trip. We had some FABULOUS snorkeling days on Looe Key reef. Although the coral is on the decline, the fish were impressive, especially the close encounter with a good-sized bull shark. Before heading to the Keys, the students were required to pass a fairly rigorous snorkeling test at the Elmen Center as well as a lab practical. Thus, they were pretty well prepared when they got to the field. However, there is no way to prepare for the excitement that comes with putting on a mask and looking down on a coral reef for the first time!
Through the prodding of my research student (Kyle Hanson), I have been getting into some digital video editing this year. It is amazing what can now be done with this technology - for just a few thousand dollars. Kyle put together an impressive video that he used in a presentation at the National Council on Undergraduate Research meeting in May. Footage included scenes from our research expedition into the Bob Marshall Wilderness last summer to collect lake sediment cores from Big Salmon Lake in NW Montana. We even went in the studio and recorded some live music for the soundtrack! Kyle is working on getting some of this footage onto the Bio Dept. web site, so check it out.
To cap off this school year, I'm having some fun with a group of Augie faculty putting on a musical in the new Augie theatre. It's called the Cotton Patch Gospel, which is adapted from a Clarence Jordan book that is a retelling of the Gospel of Matthew, set in the 1950's in Georgia! The score was written by Harry Chapin and includes some fun bluegrass music. Ivan Fuller plays the narrator, and there are five of us in the band (Scott Johnson - music dept, Dick Hanson - Dean, Chris Oldstone Moore - history dept, and Gary Pederson - husband of Ann Pederson, and myself). For me, it is fun to pick and grin with banjo and guitar, but mostly it's stimulating to interact with folks like these, outside of my discipline. It's one of the joys of being in a liberal arts college environment. The show runs in early June, and then again in the fall (Sept. 14-16), so if you are around SF in Sept. and want a good laugh at some of your old profs., come check out the new theatre!
Take care, keep in touch, and stop by - anytime.
Craig Spencer
spencer@inst.augie.edu
I have now completed my third year in the Biology Department at Augustana College. It has been a good year. One particularly satisfying experience was commencement. This was the first year that I knew very many of our graduates, as my first sophomore Genetics class graduated this year. I am looking forward to seeing what "my" students do over the years!
My research in plant genetics continues to move forward. This year I have had a number of very talented students working with me: Kara Fuehrer, Beth Hamann, Jill Kruse, Erin Lee, Jesse Munkvold, and Tom Opheim. This summer, Kara, Jill, and Jesse are continuing on research funded by my USDA grant, and Melanie Klawiter and Ryan Mertz have joined the team.
We have started getting some very interesting results in the research this year. First, we have found that carbon isotope ratio can be used as a marker for heat tolerance in wheat. We are collaborating with scientists at Colorado State University to use this technique to map genes contributing to wheat heat tolerance. Second, the wheat gluten genetics project has revealed that there are a number of genes that are involved in regulating gluten expression in wheat. This work has potential for improving wheat baking quality.
In April, Erin, Jesse, and Jill presented their research results on gluten genetics at the South Dakota Academy of Science meeting. Kara presented on her research on using carbon isotope ratio as a marker for heat tolerance in wheat. Both groups did a wonderful job and were great ambassadors for Augustana!
This summer I am looking forward to attending an international conference for Christian professors called "God and the Academy". It will address the question of what it means to have a "Christian worldview" and how this impacts many fields of human endeavor. I am excited about what I will learn from this conference.
I hope you have a great summer and fall.
Mike Wanous
wanous@inst.augie.edu