Maureen Diggins, Department Chair
Gil Blankespoor Nola Bormann Deb Carlson Lee Johnson Steve Matzner Val Olness Craig Spencer Mike Wanous
SUMMER 2001 FROM THE DEPARTMENT CHAIR ...
Greetings to all of you. The past academic year has flown by. It was my second year as department chair and sometimes a little overwhelming. However, when I start to feel a bit overwhelmed, I remind myself of what a great group of faculty, staff, and students surround me and what a great group of alums are "out there" behind us. Last year I mentioned my husband, H.L., having extensive spine surgery. The recovery has been long and challenging, but he is finally "out of the woods" (or rather back into the field) thanks to some wonderful health care professionals, several of whom are our alums.
We certainly miss Lansing Prescott and Larry Tieszen; but we are happy that our "newest" faculty, Nola Bormann and Steve Matzner, are an integral part of the department. The USDA has been a good funding source for our most recent faculty additions. Mike Wanous was funded right away by USDA, followed by Steve Matzner, and now (we hope) Nola Bormann.
We continue to have wonderfully, gifted students. (Please note the boxes on scholarship recipients, admissions to graduate and professional programs, and student participation in research.) An interesting thing happened when we were nominating outstanding freshmen for the Froiland Scholarships for next academic year. Of the 12 students nominated by the faculty (five of whom were later selected for the award), six were children of alums. We concluded two things: many alums send us their children, and the children are bright and hard working! Thank you, and keep up the good work!
Last summer I had two gifted students working with me on my research. Travis Dierks has returned to do research through the summer before he starts medical school in the fall. Michelle Cederburg has been hired by Dr. John Brannian (USD Medical School and director of the In Vitro Fertilization Lab here in Sioux Falls). Michelle will be working on the hormone leptin and its effects on the viability of oocytes and embryos, using a mouse model. She will do some of the work here at Augie. A new undergraduate, Heather Reber, has joined us this summer, as we look at the hormones estrone and leptin in our obese yellow mice. Heather, Travis, and I have also been doing bone marker assays in our lab for Dr. Karen Dorn in the Nursing Department. Dr. Dorn is looking at soy in the diet, exercise and a combination of soy and exercise to see what effects they have on bone density in healthy adults. Her study is funded by the Department of Defense, and we are happy to be part of it.
As you can tell from our letters and the boxes on research projects, undergraduate participation in research is very important to us. We consider it an essential part of our program. This has been true for many, many years; and a large number of our alums in all professions are also veterans of undergraduate research. Our philosophy is upheld by a report in a recent issue of the journal Science (Vol. 293, 13 July, p.193). That report states that U.S. liberal arts colleges "train a disproportionate share of the nation's scientific workforce." Essential to that training, we believe, is undergraduate experience in research (followed by publication in refereed journals). How we fund those undergraduates has always been a matter of hard work. We have had years of funding by NSF programs (URP and REU) and we write student funding into NIH, USDA, and NASA proposals as often as we can. We usually piece together enough funding for about 10-12 students each summer. Doug and Gaye Bell have supported at least one student for each of the past several summers. Our hope someday is to establish a permanent endowment for undergraduate research. Such an endowment would supplement, not replace, the extramural funding we are always seeking from the government agencies. Our thoughts are that an independent endowment would enable some new "pilot" research projects to be started with students. Completion of a pilot project and collection of preliminary data strengthens one's proposal for government funding. So please "stay tuned" as we work on this concept of an undergraduate research endowment. We may come to you for help to fund these young scholars
I must close and save some space for our other letters. Thank you for returning the form at the end of the Newsletter when new things happen in your life. It helps us keep our alumni files up to date, and we just plain enjoy reading your news! You are all so important to us. (We remember you and boast about your accomplishments a lot!) Please keep in touch. Stop by, call, or send an e mail to let us know how you are. God bless you all!
Maureen Diggins
diggins@inst.augie.edu
I'm writing this paragraph in early June, having just come back from teaching Field Ornithology at the Au Sable Environmental Institute in northern Michigan. I very much enjoy the teaching I do there‹the students are great, the forests are lush and green, and the birds are varied and interesting, especially the wood warblers. But, I'm always glad to be back on the prairie where one can look up and see the sky and look ahead and see the horizon.
This past year I completed 30 years of teaching at Augustana College and my plans are to teach one more year. As you might imagine, I'm doing a lot of "looking back" these days. When I first joined the Department of Biology at Augie, included among my colleagues were Sven Froiland, Will Rosine, and Dilwyn Rogers, all of whom have passed on. Also among my colleagues then were Lansing Prescott and Larry Tieszen who have left the Department to go on to other things. So, some have gone but others have come to join us. It is exciting and stimulating to work with enthusiastic young colleagues who take with them new ideas and new perspectives. I am very thankful to God for the years he has given me at Augustana College.
Last summer was the second consecutive summer I participated in the teaching of field biology courses in Kenya, East Africa. I taught a course with the title, "Mammals of East Africa." Although I was a bit out of my field, I had a very good time teaching the course. As you might guess, observing and studying mammals in some of Kenya's parks and preserves was a unique and spectacular experience. Here, on campus, the academic year just past held few surprises for me. I continue to participate in introductory-level courses as a member of teaching teams and in the spring I taught my advanced-level Ornithology course. I also continue to devote some of my time to the research I have been doing in the invasion dynamics of exotic smooth bromegrass.
As always, I invite all of you to come see us, when and if you are in
Sioux Falls. God bless you all.
Gil Blankespoor
blank@inst.augie.edu
Hello everyone! It is hard to believe another year has flown by! Scott, Trevor and I are glad winter is over and summer weather has arrived. Scott and I enjoy riding our motorcycles so we look forward to the end of snow every year. Trevor is now almost two years old. He already has had his first motorcycle ride (in a sidecar) and loved it!
This was my second year as a faculty member in the Biology department and while not quite as chaotic as the first, I definitely kept busy enough to stay out of trouble. Every year I feel blessed to be able to work with such a great group of students both in classes and in research projects. As usual, I taught General Microbiology and Biological Principles I in the fall and Introduction to Microbiology and Biochemistry in the spring. The one new class I taught was Human Disease during interim.
One of the great things about teaching at Augie is getting a chance to work closely with students on research projects. This last summer I started a research project looking at iron acquisition in streptococci associated with bovine mastitis. Two students, Jill Kapplinger and Jason Olinger, worked with me to get this new project up and going. Since this was a new area of research for me also, I think I learned almost as much as Jill and Jason! The preliminary data obtained last summer was included in a USDA seed grant submitted in November. I should be receiving word on possible funding of that grant soon. Meanwhile, research this summer will continue using ARAF (Augustana Research and Artist Fund) grant funds as well as some funds from a grant given by Doug and Gaye Bell. I am fortunate to have Jason working with me again this summer before he heads off to medical school. In addition to continuing the work started last summer, we will also be characterizing to the species level all the clinical isolates we have obtained.
Even though I'm not in the classrooms of GSC during the summer, I don't totally abandon teaching during the summer. Scott and I are both motorcycle safety instructors and at least several weekends during the summer, we teach a group of students the joys of riding motorcycles safely. Since microbiology research generally doesn't involve a lot of outdoor work, this gives me a chance to spend some hours outside doing two things I loveŠ.riding motorcycles and teaching!
Keep those letters and emails coming. It's great to hear from Augie
alums and catch up on what you are doing!
Nola Bormann bormann@inst.augie.edu
Hello Everyone! It's June and time to reflect upon another wonderful year! We've said good bye to the class of 2001 and will soon be greeting the class of 2005 (wow!).
We have graduated a strong group of students, several of whom are heading off to professional school in health care (my advising specialty). Congratulations to those students and other alumni who will soon be traveling new paths. Thanks to the many of you who have helped our students make career decisions by serving as mentors. Your often-unrecognized support is so very important. If you would like to add your name to my list of alumni career mentors, please send me an email (dcarlson@inst.augie.edu). While many students explore traditional health-care careers, I am also interested in hearing from those of you who have chosen less familiar career paths or who have combined a background in life sciences with other career interests. It is so important for our students to see the wonderful things that Augie alumni have done and are doing!
I will be on sabbatical leave next year, and I am looking forward to spending a significant amount of time in research labs at SDSU (Brookings), the University of Minnesota (St. Paul) and Tuskegee University (Alabama). This summer I will be doing a fair amount of writing as well as co-editing the proceedings of an international meeting on the pathology of amphibians and reptiles. Sometime during the summer (which already seems too short) I hope to continue the project, sequencing of tumorigenic frog herpesvirus DNA fragments, that Jenny Kapplinger (2002) worked on last summer and presented at the first Augustana Symposium in April.
I will be at Augie this summer except for brief trips to Grand Forks (for my son's hockey camp) and the Black Hills. I will be in and out of my office during the academic year but will still be reading my email. Please visit me when you are on campus or send me a message! Still in Frogs!
Deb Carlson
carlson@inst.augie.edu
Another year has sped by and it's time to get a newsletter note together before I leave for Maine to do my Developmental Biology Teaching workshop at the University of Maine. I'm really excited about that because the group of faculty colleagues from various colleges is smaller this year and the experience will be less hectic and more fun for all. Of course, we'll make time for lobsters, mussels, and Pemaquid Ale, and even for a few sea urchin experiments on the side.
It was fun to be involved in teaching the non-majors course (Biol. 110) again this year. I can't really say why I like doing that so much at this stage of my career, but I do. We can never quite explain enrollment surges in various courses, but this coming year will offer a special challenge because my Comparative Anatomy and Embryology course (that was VS&D; for many of you) will have 24 students this Fall. I'm wondering, for example, how I'll get around to doing the major abdominal artery dissection with each pair as I like to do. Many of you may remember doing those arterial loops (anastomoses) together. On the plus side, I'm enjoying having two very bright part time research students with me. They're Jenny Kapplinger from Spring Grove, MN, and Amy Lems from Inwood, IA.
We had several alumni seminar speakers this year. In the Fall, David Bader (Vanderbilt University) talked about his very highly regarded research on coronary vessel development. This Spring Maria Bell talked about her research and clinical work on cervical cancer. Cullen Robbins told us about his work at the Eros Data Center on changing vegetation patterns. And, I gave a kind of summarizing seminar about my continuing work over the years on temperature and developmental processes. That leaves the thyroid work, the other mainstream of my research, to be summarized one last time sometime in the next couple of years.
Another exciting thing for me was the publication of the Third Edition of my Developmental Biology lab manual with McGraw-Hill. It is somewhat expanded and really updated in many places so it was a lot of work to get it done, and an especially satisfying feeling to see the finished product.
Finally, I want to tell you how much we enjoyed a series of "trial run" alumni get acquainted lunches that we did this Spring. Please read the note on the lunches elsewhere in this Newsletter. We've also had a number of drop-in visits and we increasingly hear from people via e-mail. We're always happy to see you or to have news, in whatever form, about what you're doing. Please keep in touch.
Lee Johnson
johnson@inst.augie.edu
Aahh spring! When an ecologists thoughts
turn to wildflowers and deer ticks. I think the ticks have been less
this spring, perhaps due to the colder winter. This spring we started
the biology "alumni lunches" which have been a great opportunity to
get to know our biology alumni. At one particular lunch we had alumni
who had taken their science classes in what is now the Administration
building, the barracks (that were most recently the old social
science building), and GSC. It is interesting to get that historical
perspective.
I had my first experience teaching during interim. Let me say that
teaching an interim class is much harder than taking an interim
class. The research from last summer was very successful; Ellen
Holste will be presenting our results at the Ecological Society of
America meeting in Madison, Wisconsin this August. In addition to the
summer research, I submitted two manuscripts that were published in
April and February 2001 (J. of Experimental Botany, Australian J. of
Plant Physiology). A manuscript that I submitted this spring just got
accepted and will probably be published this fall (Plant, Cell &
Environment).
Both Jetty (Dr. Duffy-Matzner in Chemistry) and I will be supervising undergraduate research projects this summer. I will be supported again this summer on USDA grant money, looking at how various environmental factors affect one particular drought tolerance trait in pinto beans, silver maple, and Siberian elm. Ellen Holste and Kara Wiebe will be working full time this summer supported through the USDA grant. Both plan to conduct projects that they will present at the 2nd annual Augustana Undergraduate Research Symposium. I served on the planning committee for the symposium this past spring. It turned out to be a great success. Approximately 40 students presented their independent research at the symposium and at least 11 of those students were from biology.
On the home front, life is much more hectic with three boys rather than two. I feel like a shuttle bus driver every morning taking kids to school, preschool and daycare. The youngest is now 8 months. Given the frequent "help" that we get from his older brothers, the grandparents are mildly surprised he has survived thus far.
This next fall I will again be teaching plant ecology and
introductory biology (120). I will be team-teaching biology 120 with
Gil Blankespoor who will be retiring next year. This summer and fall
we will all be trying to absorb some of the knowledge he has gained
in the last 30+ years of teaching here at Augustana College. Hope
this finds you well; best wishes to you all.
Steve Matzner
matzner@inst.augie.edu
Second Edition of the New Millennium Science Education Update! (and true to form, I have not managed to get this done in time &endash; still in the Newsletter Doghouse)
The Secondary Mentorship program continues to graduate terrific constructivist science teachers‹I am very proud them and what they are doing in the classroom. Scary happening this year though‹the placement of a current student with former student for the student teaching experience!!! On the positive side it's a terrific mentoring opportunity, but on the negative side it's almost like teaching a 'second generation'‹means the years are flying by I'm afraid!
The third and final Science Institute of the Science Education Masters Cohort has just been completed. It was an Earth and Space Science Institute, and we were very fortunate to be able to work with EROS Data Center on some ground truthing problems‹'satellites on a stick' being important pieces of equipment! ! We worked very hard collecting data when the weather conditions were 'satellite friendly', and I personally can attest to the unfriendliness of red cedar when slithering on your belly beneath their grasping branches, and they do grow in some REALLY steep places (yes there are some in Nebraska!!!). The field study location was the Niobrara Nature Conservancy Preserve in northwestern Nebraska‹70,000 acres of rolling sand hills, beautiful sunrises, and the ever-invading Red Cedar. We were serenaded to sleep every night by coyotes‹woke up every morning to a white tail deer browsing right outside the ladies dormitory building‹and saw and heard a greater variety of birds than we had in a long time. The "jewel in the crown" of the trip was searching for, and finding, one of the bison herds‹I should say 'bison nursery' because it seems like every female had a calf by her side!!! It was a fantastic experience‹we were able to get quite close to them and take some wonderful photographs.
The Master's Cohort is wrapping up this summer‹candidates are defending their research projects and presenting their Synthesis Portfolios. Lots of reading, but some terrific projects and I believe we have a cohort of teachers who are motivated to "make a difference" in their respective classrooms. A follow-up study on my part will track this 'hypothesis.'
Our Alaska contingent was transferred to Phoenix last July (we are all now located in the "lower 48") - so we had our "first annual Christmas reunion" in Phoenix. We could become mighty spoiled‹running around in short sleeves and shorts, golfing, and climbing Squaw Peak while listening to blizzards being reported 'up north'ŠŠŠŠŠŠŠ.hmm, not too hard to take.
My husband presented a paper in Toulouse, France last July‹I had to go along for translation purposes‹tough duty but I survived! Beautiful part of France‹managed some side trips while we were there, and particularly enjoyed the one to BiarritzŠŠ.though I had forgotten they had topless beachesŠŠŠ
EUREKA!!!!!! I no longer continue to "burn rubber" between Sioux Falls and western Minnesota‹we finally sold our house, so my husband has now donned the "driving cap." Furthermore, we are 70% done building our log house, with an anticipated move-in date of August 15!!!! In the meantime‹all of our kids (and extensions thereof), are descending upon us next week for a "barn-raising"‹it promises to be an exciting "camp-out at the farm" with no electricity and waterŠŠŠŠ..
The quote for the 2001 is:
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhapsit is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
Henry David Thoreau
Val Olness
olness@inst.augie.edu<
Time marches on, as evidenced by my oldest daughter (Elizabeth) graduating from high school next week. For me, my Augie school year was capped off by our annual week-end trip to Lake Okoboji with the Aquatic Ecology class. I really enjoy getting students out into the field and giving them an opportunity to work together on field research projects. The weather was marginal and they were talking about being out on the lake in "the perfect storm", but that's what we had to work with.
The Iowa Lakeside Lab where we stay is a beautiful facility; comparable to the Flathead Lake Biological Station where I'm headed again this summer. I'll be breaking in a couple of new research students, collecting sediment cores from various lakes in NW Montana. Research highlights from this past year included some interesting work on pheasant ecology using stable isotopes. The project involved three fine seniors, Jessie Munkvold, Lincoln Likness and Sara Cody, and actually grew out of a project in my Principles of Ecology class last Fall. They presented the results at the SD Academy of Science meetings and are submitting the paper for publication. I sometimes wonder if some of our students might learn more from these "little" projects than the larger projects, where the faculty might take a heavier hand. I've done it both ways and I'm not sure. I'd welcome any thoughts that YOU might have on the matter. Please send me ane-mail or stop by.
Thanks,
Craig Spencer
spencer@inst.augie.edu
I have now completed my fourth year in the Biology Department at Augustana College. It has been a good year. Now that I have been here for several years, I am seeing our graduates go off to do great things. I am particularly proud of the students who have worked with me in independent study research. One is off to the Peace Corps, two are in Genetics Ph.D. programs (or about to start), and two will be starting medical school.
This spring I had a lot of fun designing a sequence of four new labs in Molecular Biology. The students isolated total RNA, made Northern blots, and performed labeling reactions, hybridizations, and detection of the desired gene. It was so exciting to see the band of the gene in the final lab period!
We are continuing to make progress in our plant genetics research projects. This year Lacey Luense started working on the gluten genetics project, and Jesse Munkvold is continuing to work on the research full time this summer. In April, Dan Opheim presented his research results on using carbon isotope ratio to map heat tolerance genes in wheat at the South Dakota Academy of Science meeting, and did a great job!
This summer we are taking the gluten genetics project to a new level, analyzing the genes contributing to wheat baking quality at the mRNA level, and are excited about trying some new techniques. We have almost finished the protein level analysis.
I hope you have a great summer and fall.
Mike Wanous
wanous@inst.augie.edu
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