ASPB EDUCATION FORUM

Amasino, Bartel, and Wessler Named HHMI Professors

The innovative teaching abilities of three ASPB members have been recognized by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), which has awarded them each $1 million. ASPB President-Elect Rick Amasino, Bonnie Bartel, and Susan Wessler are three of the 20 researchers who have been named 2006 HHMI Professors.

The awards are intended to give professors free rein in creating programs that get undergraduates excited about the world of science. To that end, professors may use the money however they choose—from broadening the scope of hands-on experiments to adding classes for students who may have little interest in science.

At the University of Wisconsin, Professor Rick Amasino is developing a course for nonscience majors to build an understanding of the nature of science, including public perception of the field and the theory of evolution. Additionally, he has developed rapid- cycling Brassica rapa lines to provide students practical insight into the mechanisms of genetics. This work is a spin-off of Wisconsin professor emeritus Paul Williams’s Fast Plants. Williams is also on the ASPB Education Foundation Board.

To delve deeper into the mechanisms of evolution, University of Georgia Regents Professor Susan Wessler will be leading students through genetic analyses of transposable elements in plant genomes. Her goal is to make students aware of the changes that occur within a genome and how these variations can provide a record of the organism’s adaptation through time.

Bonnie Bartel, the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University, plans to stem the loss of potential science majors who are turned off by impersonal introductory lecture classes. Small groups of freshmen will tour labs, meet with researchers, and review experimental data. Sophomores in a new lab module will analyze unknown plant enzymes and produce preliminary data that can be expanded upon in more extensive research in faculty labs. Each student will then be given the opportunity to work alongside the researcher to track progress in the lab.

ASPB Education Forum (continued): Foundation-Supported Education Projects Reach Teachers, Gardeners, County Fairs