Professor and Student Recognized for Neuroscience Contributions
Stephanie Courchesne '02, a neuroscience lab assistant, was one of the award recipients along with Biology Professor Barbara Lom.
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1/6/2003
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
by Amy Poe
Awards received by two Davidsonians recently at a meeting of the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) help confirm the success of the college's neuroscience program in integrating teaching and research.
Barbara Lom, an assistant professor of biology, received the first FUN Educator of the Year Award for launching the online Journal for Undergraduate Neuroscience Education (JUNE) earlier this year. Stephanie Courchesne ' 02, a neuroscience lab assistant, was one of five students nationwide who received a $500 FUN travel award to attend the conference. Her honor was based on an abstract she submitted detailing two years of research with Julio Ramirez, Dickson professor of psychology and director of Davidson's neuroscience program. The awards were presented at a FUN meeting held in conjunction with the Annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Lom explained that the new journal (www.funjournal.org), which is freely available on line publishes peer-reviewed reports of innovations in undergraduate neuroscience education. Its articles on topics such as laboratory exercises, funding opportunities, new media, and curricular considerations provides neuroscience faculty with a new scholarly forum to communicate innovations in undergraduate neuroscience education in the classroom and the laboratory.
Lom says, "I saw a need to create this journal when I was a new faculty member looking for a collection of quality ideas from other educators and a forum to discuss current issues in neuroscience. Every neuroscience professor has at least one unique idea for a laboratory exercise or classroom that should be shared with other faculty. Through conversations with other educators I always find a good idea for my own teaching. JUNE provides a peer-reviewed mechanism to share these great ideas."
The journal is divided into sections for editorials, articles, book and media reviews, and announcements. Supplementary materials are also accessible.
The journal will be published twice yearly. Lom said feedback on the first issue, which contained articles on topics such as neuroscience in film, action potentials in plants, how young rats learn, and the birth of neurons in crayfish brains, has been mostly positive. It included contributions from faculty at institutions such as Cornell, Wellesley, and Macalester.
Lom established the journal with the assistance of her neuroscience program colleague and JUNE senior editor Julio Ramirez, who secured funding for the project from Davidson, FUN, and Project Kaleidoscope, a national organization committed to promoting undergraduate education for the sciences.
Ramirez commented, "It is particularly exciting for Barbara to receive the first FUN Educator of the Year Award. It recognizes her courageous initiative as a young professor in conceiving an idea like this and following it through to fruition."
In addition to being named FUN Educator of the Year, Lom recently received a $30,000, one-year grant-in-aid for research from the Whitehall Foundation. She will use the funds to study how neurons in the developing brain from a precisely interconnected and functional nervous system. The Whitehall Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation that facilitates basic research in vertebrate and invertebrate neurobiology in the United States. Whitehall grants are highly competitive. The foundation awarded only sixty-eight grants last year, with all of them going to research universities.
Courchesne, who received the University of California at Davis Travel Award to attend the neuroscience conference, gave a poster presentation entitled, "Progressive Lesions of the Entorhinal Cortex Enhanced Paired-Pulse Facilitation in the Crossed Temporodentate Pathway of Rats."
Ramirez, her mentor in the project, said, "Stephanie made a great presentation. As a young professional she took full advantage of the rare opportunity to showcase her work to scientists and researchers from around the world."
He concluded that the two awards represent "the equivalent of winning a World Series" for Davidson’s neuroscience program. He said, "The awards that Barbara and Stephanie received, and some others recently, confirm that the outside world is just as excited about what's happening in neuroscience at Davidson as we are."
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,600 students. Since its establishment in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Davidson is engaged in “Let Learning Be Cherished,” a $250 million campaign in support of student financial assistance, academic resources, and community life.
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