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 From
the Dean
I
trust that everyone is enjoying
the glorious summer weather we've
been having recently and that you
are all replenishing your physical
and mental reserves for the coming
academic year.
 This
summer's big event has been the
opening of our new $23M Chemistry
Teaching Wing, with state-of-the-art
facilities for teaching and research
in organic chemistry and biochemistry,
and the G. Forrest Woods Atrium,
which will provide a new venue for
events. Although the construction
of the wing has not been without
its challenges, the building is
now ready for occupancy. Two new
faculty, Dr. Michael Doyle (chair)
and Dr. Andrei Vedernikov, were
among the first people to move into
the new space. A building commissioning
ceremony will be held this fall.
Many thanks to all the people, both
inside and outside the College,
who made this happen. Special thanks
to Phil DeShong, Steve Rokita and
Linda Zappasodi in Chemistry and
Biochemistry; Vicki Levy, David
Dalo and Bob Infantino in the Dean's
Office; and Jack Baker, Frank Brewer
and Bill Olen in Facilities.
We
in the Dean's Office have been working
on a number of summer projects:
-
A
new brochure on our undergraduate
programs, which will be a companion
to our research
capabilities brochure, rolled
off the press at the end of July.
This brochure is the result of
a very successful team effort
by several senior staff members
and departmental coordinators.
-
The
chairs, senior staff and I have
been working on a draft of a new
strategic plan that assesses progress
to date and lays out future goals.
I will be seeking faculty and
staff input in the early fall.
-
Bob
Infantino and Joelle Presson have
been preparing documentation on
the changes in specializations
proposed by the College Undergraduate
Program Committee.
-
Kaci
Thompson has been running the
Jump
Start program for rising high
school juniors and seniors, with
an enrollment of 119 from 56 schools.
-
Nancy
Baugher has been getting our accounts
in order (they have never been
so clean!) and working with me
to develop a plan for managing
the reductions in our budget.
-
The
student affairs staff, led by
Lisa Bradley, has been running
orientation sessions for our large
incoming class (approximately
400, up from 325 last year!).
-
David
Dalo has been dealing with the
final stages of the Chemistry
Teaching Wing, a number of renovation
projects and the latest flood
in Biology.
- The
Summer Research Fellowship Program, part
of the Graduate Partners Program directed
by Amel Anderson, ended July 24 with a
farewell luncheon for and presentations
by the three fellows who participated
in this year's program. The students,
who are encouraged to enter graduate school
after the completion of their undergraduate
degrees, spent the summer doing research
in the labs of Drs. Cheng Lee, Cynthia
Moss and Barbara Thorne.
The
more than 20% increase in our incoming
freshman class is especially noteworthy.
Although it will present challenges
in terms of staffing classes and
advising, I regard it as very positive
feedback on the changes that have
taken place in the College in the
past few years.
Please
mark your calendars for an All-College
Meeting on October 29 from 3 p.m.
to 5 p.m. in Room 0200 of the Skinner
Building. The major topics are likely
to be strategic planning, the Bioscience
Research Building and the budget,
but please send Stephanie Noel (sjnoel@umd.edu)
your suggestions for other agenda
items.
September
2:
First Day of Classes for Fall
September
15: Last Day of Schedule
Adjustment for Fall
October
7: Faculty/Staff Convocation
November
7: Last Day to Drop with
a W
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 Upcoming
Events
September
6:
Academically Talented Open House
September
26: Visit Maryland
Day
October
13
(Columbus Day): Visit Maryland
Day
October
25: Academically
Talented Open House
October
29:
All-College Meeting, 3 p.m.
to 5 p.m., 0200 Skinner Building
November
5:
Bioscience
Research and Technology Review
Day. College contact: Gene
Ferrick (gene@umd.edu)
November
11
(Veterans Day): Visit Maryland
Day
March
5, 2004: Spring Open
House
March
12, 2004:
Spring Open House
April
2, 2004: Spring
Open House
April
16, 2004: Spring
Open House
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Gifts
to the College
Thanks
to:
-
Jay
Nixon, William White and Syngenta,
for contributing to the Department
of Entomology General Fund to support
Dr. Barbara Thorne's research
- McLaughlin
Gormley King Company, for contributing
to the Department of Entomology General
Fund to support Dr. Galen Dively's research
-
Ruthann
Sturtevant, Victoria Mills, John
Bass, Mary Jane Stoll and Joan Dryer,
for supporting Dr. Eugenie Clark's
Zoology Research Fund
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Faculty
Recognition and In the News
Dr.
Earlene Armstrong, Entomology,
received a Role Model Citation from
Minority Access, Inc. As part of a
cooperative agreement between Minority
Access, Inc. and the Office of Minority
Health (OMH) of the Department of
Health and Human Services, role models
of various types are identified and
designated as models to be emulated.
Dr.
Spencer Benson, CBMG, was named
a visiting scientist by the Association
of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U). He will assist in the
Office of Science, Health, and Student
Engagement on the national initiative
Science Education for New Civic Engagements
and Responsibilities (SENCER).
Dr.
Jonathan Dinman, CBMG, received
a 2-year, R21 High Risk/High Impact
grant from the National Institutes
of Health for $222,750 to study "Regulation
of gene expression by ribosomal frameshifting."
 Dr.
David Inouye, Biology, is interviewed
in a July 17 Chicago Tribune
article
("Mountain Blooms Foster Warnings
about Warming"; free registration
required) about the correlation between
wildflower blooming and climate change,
which he has monitored for the last
30 years in a Colorado biological
laboratory. In the last five years,
he has noticed snow melting earlier
and flowers blooming earlier, which
he and other scientists link to global
warming.
Dr.
Bretton Kent, Entomology, talks
about his research studying fossilized
teeth of the giant white shark, a
60-foot pre-historic mammoth, in a
July 17 Washington Times article.
"Just by studying teeth we can
learn what they ate and how they attacked
their prey," said Kent, who found
numerous fossil shark teeth at Calvert
Cliffs.
Dr.
Michael Raupp, Entomology, is
quoted in a July 19 Hagerstown NBC
25-TV article
about the Maryland Christmas Tree
Association's annual "Christmas
in July" event, where growers
learn the latest in production techniques
and technology.
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Student
and Alumni Recognition
Bradley
Buran, who graduated in May with
a degree in Biological Sciences, led
the design of a new
Web page for the lab of Dr. Arthur
Popper.
Marianne
L. Horinko, who received her B.S.
in Analytical Chemistry in 1982, was
named
the new acting administrator of
the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) July 10 by President Bush.
Clarissa
Mathews, a Ph.D. student in Entomology,
is the co-Principal Investigator on
a newly funded 3-year grant from the
United States Department of Agriculture-National
Research Initiative Competitive Grants
Program. Dr. Mark Brown of USDA-ARS,
Appalachian Fruit Research Station,
Kearneysville, WV, will also serve
as a co-PI on the $225,000 grant.
Titled "Manipulation of Insect
Natural Enemies in Apple Orchards
with Peach Extrafloral Nectaries,"
the grant will support research that
focuses on developing an orchard pest
management system that reduces dependency
on chemical insecticides and increases
the environmental and economic sustainability
of apple production.
 Pamela Sharpe, who received her
Ph.D. in Microbiology, was named
the DuPont Scientist of the Month
for July. Dr. Sharpe, who works at
the DuPont Experimental Station in
Wilmington, Delaware, is part of a
team developing a comprehensive picture
of how a methanotrophic bacterium
called Methylomonas sp. functions.
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Welcome
to New Staff
The
College would like to welcome:
-
In
JIFSAN: Vernora (Nora) Petty,
executive administrative assistant
-
In
the
College Park Scholars-Life Sciences
Program:
Stacy Richardson, assistant
director of the program
 Notable
Publications
The
following two articles from the lab of
Dr. Jonathan Dinman, CBMG, will
be published in the journal RNA
in August:
-
Arturas
Meskauskas, Jason W. Harger, Kristi
L. Muldoon Jacobs, and Jonathan D. Dinman.
2003. Decreased peptidyltransferase
activity correlates with increased programmed
-1 ribosomal frameshifting and viral
maintenance defects in the yeast Saccharomyces
cerevisiae. RNA.
9: 982-992.
-
Jason
W. Harger and Jonathan D. Dinman. 2003.
An in vivo dual-luciferase assay system
for studying translational recoding
in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
RNA.
9: 1019-1024.
Dr.
William Fagan, Biology, coauthored
a paper that was published July 22 in
Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences:
-
Hope,
D., C. Gries, W. Zhu, W. F. Fagan, C.
L. Redman, N. B. Grimm, A. L. Nelson,
C. Martin, A. Kinzig. 2003. Socioeconomics
drive urban plant diversity. PNAS.
100: 8788-8792.
Dr.
Pamela Lanford, BSCI105 Laboratory
Coordinator, was coauthor of a May 8 article
in Nature:
-
Montcouquiol,
M., Rachel, R. A., Lanford, P. J., Copeland,
N. G., Jenkins, N.J., and Kelley, M.W.
2003. Identification of Vangl2 and Scrb1
as planar polarity genes in mammals.
Nature.
423:173-7.
Dr.
Robert Walker and graduate student
Bill Steel, Chemistry and Biochemistry,
published a paper in the July 17 issue
of Nature:
-
Steel,
W. H., and Walker, R. A. 2003. Measuring
dipolar width across liquid-liquid interfaces
with "molecular rulers." Nature.
424:296-299.
First
International Conference on Animal Communication
Held at University of Maryland
The
Center for Comparative and Evolutionary
Biology of Hearing and the Acoustical Society
of America co-hosted the first International
Conference on Animal Acoustic Communication
on campus at the end of July (see http://asa.aip.org/communication.html).
More than 200 scientists from around the
world presented more than 150 papers and
posters on topics ranging from hearing to
sound production and evolution, and discussed
animals ranging from insects to humans and
marine mammals.
 The
conference featured three keynote speakers
with international stature. Dr. Darlene
Ketten spoke on "If You've seen One
Mammal Ear, Have You Really Seen Them All?"
Dr. Ketten, a professor at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute, is the world's
expert on marine mammal hearing and was
recently featured in Science magazine
(and numerous international newspapers)
for her work trying to solve the riddles
surrounding the death of whales, which has
been attributed to high-intensity sonars.
Dr. Jack Bradbury spoke on "Parrots
and Technology." Dr. Bradbury, a professor
in the Laboratory for Ornithology at Cornell
University, is one of the world's leading
behavioral ecologists and experts on animal
communication, and is the author of the
major text in the field. Dr. Donald R. Griffin
spoke on "The Meanings of Acoustic
Communication by Animals." Dr. Griffin
is a professor emeritus at Harvard, a member
of the National Academy, and the discoverer
of echolocation by bats. At 89, Professor
Griffin is still an active researcher. His
book Listening in the Dark was a
best seller for many years, and he has made
immense contributions to the fields of animal
behavior, physiology and neuroethology.
Back
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Black
Issues in Higher Education's Rankings
of Graduate Schools
Black
Issues in Higher Education
publishes its annual ranking of graduate
schools based on the number of graduates
from underrepresented minority groups. The
University of Maryland rank improved from
34 to 29 in the category of Asian American
Ph.D. graduates in the Biological and Life
Sciences. (Click here
for a complete listing of Maryland rankings.)
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