Bears In The SEA

So I was looking on my FaceBook feed and noticed an interesting feature from Smithsonian Magazine about women in science. In the biological sciences the proportion of male and female students is about equal through undergraduate and graduate study. Later on there are far fewer women in mid level and senior positions. Why is this the case? I do not know for sure, but I thought I would share how women scientists have shaped my development into a scientist and teacher.

The greatest impact on my career path was made by Mary Beckerle. She is a very prominent cell biologist who currently is director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, and is a past president of the American Society for Cell Biology. She has an interesting lecture on the cell biology and genetics of cancer at the iBioseminars website. When I was a Junior I took her advanced cell biology course. One day in class she announced that she had an opening for an undergraduate research assistant in her laboratory. I applied for the position, but I was not offered the job. Not being content with that I went back to her and begged, literally begged, to join her lab even without pay. She still said no, but then directed me to two new faculty that might have positions available. One studied the microtubule cytoskeleton in Xenopus (African clawed frog) and the other studied the polarization of brown algal zygotes in response to light. My main interest through college was in cell and neuro biology; I really liked the electrophysiology labs from neurobiology class. The research in Darryl Kropf’s lab was investigating the ionic basis for a small electrical current that flows through the zygote as the new developmental axis is established. Therefore, I was able to apply my interest in electrophysiology to study these small algal zygotes, thus beginning my interest in plant cell biology. So I have Dr. Beckerle’s rejection to thank for my current research interests.

After working with Darryl for a few years I applied to graduate school and chose to go to Purdue University. It is common in many graduate programs that first year students do rotations in a few labs that they might be interested to join. One of the labs I chose to do a rotation in was with Jody Banks. She is a wonderful geneticist and is, in fact, an academic granddaughter of one of the people featured in the article, Barbara McClintock. Jody studies the genetics of ferns and other lower plants. At the time I was working in her lab she had just published a really elegant genetic model for the sex determination of the gametophytes in the fern Ceratopteris. Working with Jody made me realize that I don’t have what it takes to really think like a geneticist so, although I lover her dearly, I did not join her lab. She was recently featured on NPR for her role in leading the sequencing of a primitive plant called a spike moss, which are believed to be among the oldest vascular plants. The story was called “Decoding the Platypus of the Plant Kingdom“, give it a listen it’s interesting stuff.

Finally that brings us to Baylor. In the normal training of scientists in the US the main focus, well essentially the only focus, is on productive research through graduate school and postdoctoral study. Then all of these well trained scientists start applying for positions at universities, which requires them now to TEACH. Well, we have had little or no experience teaching so it’s like being thrown in the deep end not knowing how to swim. We thrash around at first trying to figure out how to teach our first course, emulating the teachers that most greatly impacted us, but it is impossible to imitate another we have to find our own path. That is where Dr. Adair comes in. She has been teaching for many more years than me and has a more formal background in teaching. She cares deeply about teaching her students the best she possibly can is is constantly researching the best practices for teaching and learning. My association with her has had a profound impact on the way I approach my teaching. You should feel fortunate that Dr. Adair spearheaded the application for the NGRI, I sure do!

So there you have it 3 women scientists that have had major impacts on the progression of my career. So who influences and inspires your future?

We have established a new course blog for our 2011/2012 class. It can be found at:

http://courseblogs.atlhub.net/bearsinthesea2011/

I’ve heard that some people are having a hard time posting pictures. Check the file size, if it is over 1 MB it will not load.  To add an image, press the small star next to the Upload/Insert text above the composition window. Press the “Select Files” button and select the image you want. You can automatically have the software resize by selecting the Thumbnail, Medium, Large or Full Size buttons. The Medium selection is a good size for pictures in posts. Finally, press the “Insert Into Post” button (Not the “Save All Changes” button). All uploaded images are saved in a gallery and you can go to the Gallery to reuse images.

I am done.  El fin.

I am so happy, yet sad.

I will miss everyone.

What a great year.

Annotations are done.

Test is done.

My year …. eh, two more finals.

Well, the final is over and summer begins! It’s hard to believe we’re finished!
The Maize presentations were really great! It was great to see what each person had found and to see the unique presentation styles of everyone!
I hope everyone has safe travels home and a great summer! Thanks for a great year!

Also…the presentations today were really interesting and I had no clue that corn had many of these functions. Also, it was interesting to see Dr. Gibbon so in his element and so excited about all of the corn annotations. Poor Jesus and Bayless were being jibed at a bit though, but it was all done in a fun way so I guess it’s ok. I wonder how they feel about it though? lol

I can honestly not believe how quick;y this year has blown by. We have learned a lot and I honestly feel prepared, maybe even a little bit too much, for future biology courses. I also can’t wait to dive into research next year and continue upon what I’ve started this year! It has been tons of fun and I can’t wait to see everybody in their bright orange shirts tomorrow. Synchronized test-taking to the max, we even have matching outfits (mostly).

Yayay! I’m so looking forward to our last presentations today! Even though it will be the second-to-last time we will all be together for this class I can’t wait to hear about everyone’s corn genes, though, I’ve discovered some interesting functions and I’m sure everyone else has, too. See y’all soon!

After the last day of classes and labs, I had thought that it would finally sink in that all too soon we would be leaving Baylor and going home to relax (and take more classes!) for the summer. However, this proved to be untrue. These past two weeks have been so insanely busy that it does not ever seem like the year could possibly be drawing to a close. Looking back, we, as a class, have made so much progress this year. We went from being completely clueless, if highly enthusiastic, at the beginning of each semester to confidently isolating and annotating both bacteriophage and maize genes by the end of the year. (I must admit, I was *really* not expecting to have anything to do with maize genomics…ah well. It was an interesting change of pace, at any rate.) I am going to miss spending time in wet labs and computer labs with everyone next year. Hopefully we will all continue to have classes with each other over the next few years and can keep in touch as we progress through our studies. Thank you all for making this such a wonderful year!

Hello Finals Week,

I have not missed you at all! You are filled with stress and frankly, I hate you. However, oddly, I am really looking forward to our lab final. The genes we are presenting are fun because of multiple reasons. 1) we got to pick them so we already have an interest 2) I am working alone, it is great. I miss my presentation group and all but for once it is nice not to have to coordinate schedules and assign slides. I get to do it ALL! 3) I found the wonders of prezi (you will see what I am talking about). Anyway, looking forward to everything! Finals week, bring it (but not too hard)!

We’re done with lab! I am so sad I won’t being seeing this group of people everyday next semester. This was such a wonderful program in that relationships were able to be consistent from last to semester to this semester. I loved being in a class where everyone cared and it is normal to be an overachiever

All we have left are corn presentations. I have to say that I actually enjoyed doing the annotations on the corn genes. Once I understood it I was really learning stuff along the way- but it still wasn’t easy:) I can not figure out what to do my presentation on. I don;t know how to talk for 5 minutes on something I’m not very familiar with. Everything I find that gives details is waaaaay to detailed to the point that I don’t follow at all. It’ll work out though:) I just don’t have Esther and Kristie to back me up!

And if I get one more email about completing a survey during finals I am going to be angry Bayless ))))) Anyone else agree????

Well, a one hour lab of presentations on corn genes is all that stands between us and summer. I can’t believe how fast this semester has gone by, I feel like it was January yesterday! Well, it’s been really awesome being in class with all of you guys, and I hope we can have class reunions full of gene stories in the next three years!

I cannot believe that this is our last day in lab ! This year has gone by too fast… I remember the first day of lab last semester and thinking, “What did I get myself into?!” Now we are having our last day of lab and I feel like I’m not ready to leave. I am so sad that there is not another course like this available or a follow-up course. It will take quite some getting used to to participate in a normal lab (I will be taking Chem Lab II and Genetics Lab… yuck). I am going to miss talking about bacteriophages, genes, annotations, etc. etc. Now I am always going to compare writing lab reports and doing mundane procedures in other labs to working with Benedict and providing research for Tuberculosis in our SEA lab!

I am really going to miss working with Benedict, but especially working with all of you! It has been such a great year being part of the Bears in the Sea, and I am so proud of everything we have accomplished. I’m so thankful for the friendships we built, and I am sure I will be seeing each other either in classes or around campus next year as well. I hope that everyone will enjoy their summer (which is only a week away), and good luck on all of your exams!

Good luck in Virginia Anna! I am happy you will be representing us, and I know you will do a great job! And thank you to Dr. Adair and Dr. Gibbon for this wonderful experience! I hope we will stay in contact with each other!

It is a bittersweet moment but it is official.  We are now done with our Phage Genomics Lab.  To be honest, I preferred the wet lab portion of the course because of the hands on stuff we did.  I wish we could go back into the lab and actually find the function of the genes we had no function for.  That would be cool and it is a possible thesis project, but we’ll see.  I hope everyone has a good summer and good luck Anna in Virginia!  Knock their socks off!!!!!!

I am having a grad time wrapping my mind around the concept that this is the last lab for this class. There is no next semester this time. I will really miss this class. I have a feeling that next week I will get to 2:00 in the afternoon and feel like I’m forgetting something. It’s been fun!

Everyone looked so relaxed and confident today – I guess we are really comfortable with presentations. It was really nice getting to know Benedict. I can’t wait for other people around the world to finally get to know Benedict, too! Go ~ Go~ Anna!! Show how great Benedict is(and how hard we worked )

I absolutely CANNOT believe that today was our last lab ever! I still remember walking into D310 and thinking “what have I gotten myself into?” But I’m happy to say that I’ve enjoy this experience very much and I can’t imagine spending an entire year with a better group of people!

Bio 1406 is almost over! With 3 presentations to go the year is coming to a close. We have gotten so close to these genes I feel like I am fluent in DNA now as if it were another language. I am kind of glad to be moving on. Bioinformatics is not my forte, even though I think I did pretty well with everything after I got the hang of it. Time to prepare for finals! Let the stress begin!

Okay, last day of bio lab… Ever. Wow. We’ve finished our functional annotations of Benedict, and we’re getting ready to present the most interesting proteins to the class. While researching the functions of proteins was difficult (all of the articles were above my head!), I was able to sort out my internet problems and come up with some interesting (and college-freshman level) facts about my proteins. I can’t wait to hear all about what my classmates have found about the diverse Benedict genome!

It’s the last day of lab and I’m really sad.

It’s been an entire year of spending time in lab twice a week… The fact that it is quickly coming to an end is really upsetting!

But, I’m excited to give a final presentation today! I can’t wait to see what everyone has found in the genome of Benedict

I still can’t believe that today was the last lecture day. It didn’t feel any different from other class days – I think it might be because we still have Friday and lab left that I do not feel sad yet. Also, the curiosity and the nervousness for the presentations we still have left to do for lab and biome group makes it feel like there might not be a closure! (in a good way ;p)

i dunno about yall, but i am soooo tired of annotations! almost done with ‘em though! which is good since class is almost done too… oops! nothing like the last minute! i’m sort of feeling like annotations may wind up with their own mini poem soon… i will have to ponder that one. to my poetry fans, be watching!

Yesterday in lab, my group worked feverishly on our presentation for lab on Thursday! We ended up getting a lot done! Our group only had 3 genes with functions overall which made it easy to pick the genes for the presentation! I think it will be interesting to see what other groups found tomorrow!
Other than that, Dr. Adair suggested we blog about our Easter. I went home to St. Louis for Easter with my family. It was a lot of fun but the weather wasn’t too great! On Friday, a large tornado hit Saint Louis and messed the airport up pretty bad. The picture below is from the airport on Saturday. Somehow, they managed to have it cleaned up and reopened in time for my flight on Monday!

Today our group worked on putting together all of our functional annotations for Benedict. We had several genes of interest to choose from so I think our presentation will be interesting~ (can’t believe that today is second to last day in lab!!?)