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Editor - Corey Cleland
FALL 2002
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You may notice some changes in the FUN Newsletter! As the new editor, I hope to develop our newsletter into a broader source of information and amusement. Further, we should use it to promote our organization, expand membership and reflect our values and interests. Consequently, with each issue I will tinker with the format and contents. In this issue, I have adopted a PDF format which will allow greater flexibility, in both print and online versions, although a simple text version will also be retained for now. Further, I have started two new recurring columns - Spotlight on Undergraduate Neuroscience and FUN Publications. So, are these improvements? You need to tell me. Please give me feedback, especially suggestions for future content. And if you care to contribute, please step forward.
Your FUNNIES editor, |
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FUN Activities at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting The Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting will be held in Orlando on November 2-7. As usual, FUN will be there with a variety of activities including meetings, exhibits and undergraduate posters. Mark your calendar NOW for the following:
FUN Social with undergraduate poster presentations
- Monday evening from 6:30 - 8:30. Poster session for undergraduates. Socialize with neuroscientists concerned with undergraduate education. View conference posters co-authored by undergraduate students and meet their mentors. The undergraduate travel awards will be presented. |
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On the National Teaching Awards Front... |
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ERIC WIERTELAK NAMED MINNESOTA'S BEST UNDERGRADUATE TEACHER IN PSYCHOLOGY
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His colleagues call him as a superlative teacher who regularly receives excellent evaluations from his students. "His courses are extremely popular," said Macalester psychology Professor Jaine Strauss. "His lucid explanations of complex concepts and mechanisms enable students to develop a rich and sophisticated understanding of the cutting edge of neuroscientific research," Strauss continued. Wiertelak is described as a pioneer in learning and student assessment techniques. For example, he's experimented with scratch off-exam sheets in which students immediately find out whether an answer to a multiple choice test is correct or if they need to try again. He was one of the first Macalester professors to establish a web site, which now allows students to sharpen their writing skills and present research ideas. Wiertelak joined the Macalester faculty in 1993. He is director of the college's Neuroscience Studies Program. He also serves as president of Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, the international organization that focuses on neuroscience education and research at the undergraduate level. Wiertelak is a behavioral neuroscientist and conducts behavioral and physiological research on how environmental stressors and learning effect pain modulation and other neurophysiological response mechanisms. His current research investigates the ability of natural remedies and aromatherapeutic agents to alter the activity of pain mechanisms in the central nervous system. Wiertelak earned his Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience from the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Copied from Press release.) |
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Spotlight on Undergraduate Neuroscience: Amherst College |
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| Neuroscience at Amherst College grew out of a biophysics major in the1950's and '60s, and which itself produced some distinguished neuroscientists, though no one called the field by that name until the '70s. In the early 1970's, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation decided to support the new field of neuroscience nationally, including at the undergraduate level, and invited a proposal from Amherst. Some faculty predictably groused about money driving curricular changes, but reason prevailed and the major was approved in 1972. Depending on what counts as a neuroscience program - faculty approval, first declared major, or first graduate - both Amherst and Oberlin can stake slightly different claims to having the first-ever undergraduate neuroscience program. |
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Faculty starting the Amherst program were Al Sorenson (Psychology, recently retired), Alan Waggoner (Chemistry, now at Carnegie Mellon), and Steve George (Biology), joined in 1978 by Lisa Raskin (Psychology). Additional faculty now include Sarah Turgeon, Shelly Dickinson, and - coming this summer - John Paul Baird, all in Psychology. Facilities were adequate but ancient until 1996, when we happily moved into a new Life Sciences building along with Biology. The new building is really a wing attached to the Merrill Science Center which houses Chemistry and Physics, making interactions with colleagues in those departments all the easier. |
| An average of 10 students a year major in neuroscience at Amherst out of a graduating class of 400, with recent classes having 12 to 15 majors. Neuroscience has the largest number of course requirements of any major at Amherst. The Neuroscience Program has come up in the Amherst section of various college guides as the major to avoid if you want to take the country-club approach to college. Keeping up the Amherst biophysics tradition, the major requires physics along with introductory biology and chemistry through organic. The Neurobiology course takes a strongly biophysical approach. Other neuroscience courses include Physiological Psychology (soon to be replaced by a new Introduction to Neuroscience course), Psychopharmacology, Hormones and Behavior, Biochemistry, and upper-level seminars on specialized topics. Neuroscience majors also take Biology electives such as Molecular Genetics or Immunology. The senior seminar includes outside speakers and student presentations. | |
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The most frequent question from prospective Amherst students is, "How soon can I do research in neuroscience if I come to Amherst?" While admitting we can't offer a paid lab job in the first week of the Fall semester to every interested first-year student, students do get into labs at Amherst as early as interterm in their first year, and also the following summer, thanks to a Howard Hughes grant. Most majors do research elsewhere during one or two summers, through summer research programs or connections with alumni at medical schools or NIH. Seniors can choose to do honors thesis research during senior year, and neuroscience has the highest percentage of students choosing to do theses of any major at the college. |
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Amherst College is a mile from the University of Massachusetts, home to a thriving Neurosciences and Behavior Program, and most years one or two Amherst neuroscience majors who have research interests matching those of UMass faculty do senior thesis work there. The "Five College" system also includes Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire Colleges in addition to UMass. The result is a substantial concentration of neuroscientists and neuroscience courses - which Amherst students can take as part of their regular semesters - in rural western Massachusetts. About 70% of Amherst neuroscience graduates go to medical school or combined M.D./Ph.D. programs; another 20% get Ph.D.s in neuroscience, and the other 10% enter a range of careers of different social utility, such as high school science teaching, science communication (e.g. writing scripts for "Bill Nye the Science Guy"), or working on Wall Street. We're proud of them all! Questions for the future include whether to remain a program rather than a department. From the beginning, neuroscience at Amherst has been a program, with each faculty member appointed in a traditional department such as Biology and Psychology. While it avoids complexities such as multi-department tenure cases, remaining a program requires extra attention each time there is a resignation or retirement to make sure Neuroscience's needs are considered. With many other FUN member institutions now having neuroscience departments, Amherst may well go in that direction in the future. |
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The 2002 SFN Travel Award Winners Hot off the presses. And the winners are... The winners of the 2002 Travel Awards have just been announced. Look for more information on them (with pictures) in the next issue of the FUNNIES.
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Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience
J U N E
- coming soon to news stands near you!
With your help, that is! Please submit an article to YOUR new journal on undergraduate neuroscience. Manuscripts for articles or reviews of books, media, or texts should be submitted to the editor by April 1st, 2003 for consideration in the second issue to be published in the summer of 2003. Educators are invited to submit papers and reviews to JUNE. JUNE is a new FUN-sponsored electronic journal for undergraduate neuroscience faculty that will publish peer-reviewed reports of innovations in any area of undergraduate neuroscience education related to the mission of advancing undergraduate neuroscience. Emphasis will be placed on communicating effective laboratory exercises. In addition to publishing peer-reviewed articles, JUNE will also serve as a means for faculty to exchange information regarding funding opportunities, laboratory techniques, innovative media, curricula, and teaching methods. Letters to the editor, as well as book, curricular, equipment, and media reviews will also be published. (JUNE is not an appropriate vehicle to publish topics related to pre-college neuroscience education or the results of undergraduate research.) Suggestions for topics readers would like JUNE to address are also encouraged. Detailed instructions for authors are available at www.funjournal.org . For further information please contact the editor, Barbara Lom, balom@davidson.edu |
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Publications by FUN members This new column will list publications by members of FUN, with undergraduate authors indicated by underlines. For future newsletters, please submit citations to the editor (clelancl@jmu.edu ) with full names and indicate undergradaute co-authors. Grisham, W., Lee, J., McCormick, M. E., Yang-Stayner, K. , & Arnold, A. P. (2002) Antiandrogen blocks estrogen-induced masculinization of the song system in female zebra finches. Journal of Neurobiology, 51, 1-8. Sarah M. Turgeon and David A. Reichstein (2002) Decreased striatal c-Fos accompanies latent inhibition in a conditioned taste aversion paradigm. Brain Research, 924, 120-123.
Corey Cleland and Ross E. Bauer
(2002) Spatial transformations in the withdrawal response of the tail in intact and spinalized rats. Journal of Neuroscience - Rapid Communications 22:5265-5270.
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Student help needed at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting!!! Undergraduate students attending the meeting can apply to receive a $50 stipend for staffing our FUN booth at the meeting, for the duration of a morning or afternoon session. Your students can get help paying for the cost of attending the meeting by helping out FUN-- answering questions, distributing our brochures and selling FUN merchandise! If you have an undergraduate who is attending the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Orlando, PLEASE encourage them to participate in the FUN student stipend program. This opportunity is limited to one stipend per morning or afternoon session. As with the travel award, only dues-paying members of FUN may sponsor nominees. If you're not a member, become one today! Regular Member Dues are still only $15. . . money well spent! Application instructions (simple!) are stated below. Send an email to Eric Wiertelak (wiertelak@macalester.edu ) ASAP with the following information: FROM THE STUDENT: The student's name, email address, and which sessions (a.m. or p.m.) on which days of the meeting that they are available to staff the booth. FROM THE FUN MEMBER: A statement of sponsorship from a dues-paying member of FUN, stating simply that: 1) the member supports the student's application for the stipend, and 2) that the member has verified that the student will be attending the Neuroscience Meeting (members may support more than one entry, and the sponsor can be the student's advisor). Students will be selected on a first-come, first-serve basis, so apply early! Students will not be eligible for multiple stipends except in the event that sessions remain unstaffed after all applicants have been assigned to a session. Students can also elect to split a single stipend in order to "share" staffing for a session (allowing one student to attend presentations for part of the session, while their "partner" staffs the booth), or choose to donate their stipend to their school department, neuroscience club, etc. | TOP | CONTENTS | NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES | HOME |
Future FUN Stuff
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Copyright © 2002 Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience. All rights reserved. |