College of Science Academic Report for 2007-2008 15
2007-2008 Highlights
1. Programmatic Achievements—List initiatives undertaken and outcomes achieved in the following areas:
a. Student engagement and success
The major strategic focus for the College this year was on student engagement and improvement of the “gateway” curriculum. The College’s impact on students at OSU is widespread and our courses are critical to students’ success in many programs. Some of the key areas we have worked on include:
Curriculum design and improvement:
Mathematics led a campus discussion on the structure of pre-calculus mathematics courses. From those discussions, we used private funds to support an expansion of the course offerings of MTH 103 (13 sections) and MTH 111 (5 sections) using a small course (35 seat) format. Initial data suggest dramatic improvements in student success and we are seeking ways to expand that approach to all of our 103 and 111 offerings.
The Calculus sequence was redesigned by Mathematics a year ago to emphasize problem-solving skills in addition to basic skills and information.
The Department of Science and Mathematics Education, with the College, sponsored a Community of Learners Lunch to bring toegethre faculty to discuss issues important o tteaching.
Supported in part by private funds, we reinstituted a “trailer” section of Chemistry 221, to provide a path for students who needed to work on their mathematical skills before proceeding to Chemistry. This sequence has met with highly favorable feedback from students and from other departments.
Physics has raised private funds to renovate a classroom to implement a version of the SCALE-UP introductory physics classroom, a model piloted at NCSU (http://www.ncsu.edu/PER/scaleup.html)
Statistics created online versions of ST 314 and ST 351 were offered for the first time in Fall 2007and each quarter since. Both have been reasonably successful – ST 3 51 is also being offered online in Summer Session.
The College initiated a Life Sciences Curriculum Review committee, to consider the coordination and structure of majors in life sciences and pre-professional health programs. That group’s work is ongoing.
Geosciences continued work on EarthSystem5 – a collaborative effort with COAS and the Honors college to use existing COAS and Geo Honors courses to channel students into a 5th year MS program in earth science disciplines.
Mike Lerner (Chemistry) has led an effort to implement the Minor in Chemistry (a very high demand program) as being fully available through E-campus. This does require course development in providing laboratory courses in “hybrid” form composed of extensive online materials for lecture and assessment coupled with an accelerated in-person laboratory experience in Corvallis.
A grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has allowed Biology at OSU to be one of 12 programs in the country to be invited to participate in the HHMI Phage Genomics Introductory Biology Laboratory Sequence.
Undergraduate research experiences:
Private support in Biochemistry provided funds for students to attend undergraduate research conferences in San Diego and in Montana.
The Cripps Scholarship fund supported six undergraduate research fellowships in the HHMI summer program.
The College has made undergraduate research a central part of our curriculum development. For example, Zoology now has 73 (46 women; ~7 minorities) undergraduates working in research labs.
BI 450/451 Marine Biology was offered for the 26th year. The course has been dramatically restructured to include student projects and more coordination with resources at Hatfield for research and internship opportunities.
The undergraduate senior thesis program in Physics, where all majors do research and write a thesis, is developing to be a national model. It culminates in a "conference-style" series of presentations at the end.
The proposal “Developing reduced noise electronics for a gigahertz radio telescope and implementing a real time web interface,” submitted by Daniel Schwartz in Physics was selected as the 2007-08 Undergraduate Research Award winner by the national Society of Physics Students.
Student community building and support:
In 2007-08, the College of Science awarded $265,225 in scholarships from the OSUF to 166 students. This included a new scholarship, the Sally Hicks-Runes Scholarship, awarded to Mai Duong in Chemistry.Kevin Ahern (Biochemistry) helped advise students creating an undergraduate research magazine “The Catalyst”.
The College of Science continued to coordinate the advising and application process for pre-medical and dental students at Oregon State University. This year 76% of applicants to medical school were accepted. The chief pre-medical and pre-dental advisor at OSU, Chere Pereira, received the Founder’s Award from the Northwest Osteopathic Medical Foundation. Chere will receive the OSU Academic Advising Award at University Day in Fall 2008.
The College developed and staffed a student Science Ambassadors Program, and engaged the students in outreach and recruitment activities.
The College made the first awards (17) from the College of Science Student Travel Award fund, to support student participation in scientific meetings.
Oregon State University had 32 students (17 male/15 female) accepted to the OHSU School of Dentistry for Fall 2007, more than any other college or university in the country.
Kevin Ahern and Tari Tan received a grant of ~$9000 from the OSU Women's Giving Circle for further development of Sigma Delta Omega (a sorority for women in science founded by BB major Tari Tan)
Several units have developed exit interviews with graduating seniors as part of our assessment activities.
The Geoscience Club has developed a series of field trips for credit and experience. This year included a trip to Death Valley. Planning is under way for a field trip to Israel and Palestine next spring break led by Aaron Wolf. The Club has also sponsored as series of tailgaters with the department for students, faculty and alumni prior to football games this past year.
Biology developed plans to deliver a direct program assessment using the ETS Biology Major Field Test.
Intervention and supplemental support:
Biology collaborated with Career Services to develop presentations to promote involvement in research and internships and worked with Admissions on a new pilot project on how to articulate series courses from Community Colleges and other schools that do not match our curriculum
In addition to the work done in MTH 103 and MTH 111, a new student-led tutoring model was designed for students in introductory Biology, with the Academic Success Center (ASC). Students from the Sigma Delta Omega women’s sorority were trained as tutors.
b. Research and its impact
The College strategy has been to develop research foci that leverage our strengths with those of other units on campus, so that we can reach critical mass. This means that we are connected to many of the major initiatives on campus and in Oregon. Some of the research highlights this year include:
Thematic planning and leadership:
Vrushali Bokil (Mathematics) is helping lead the Ecosystems Informatics IGERT. She co-teaches two classes during each year with Julia Jones (geosciences), Matthew Betts (forestry), Weng-Keen Wong and Xiaoli Fern (computer science) and Yevgeniy Kovchegov (Math).
Ed Brook and Peter Clark (Geosciences) helped lead the OSU Climate Research Coordinating Working Group. An outcome of the working group was formation of a committee to develop a strategic plan for an Earth System Science initiative at OSU. Roger Nielsen and other Geoscience faculty played a major role in that group.
Robert Higdon’s research on the numerical solution of partial differential equations, as applied to the computational modeling of ocean circulation is an example of our efforts in developing a center for applied mathematics. He has co-authored papers in this area with Andrew Bennett and Roland de Szoeke of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU.
Hannah Gosnell’s(Geoscience) research on agricultural landscape change in the American West has been frequently cited in both scholarly articles and in national and regional newspapers and is an important part of the Rural Communities Initiative.
Doug Keszler (Chemistry) has a leadership role in the ONAMI science advisory structure; Physics and Chemistry have significant ONAMI funding.
Peter Ruggiero brought in $800,000 over the next three years to examine coastal vulnerability to hazards. He has become a critical link between the disparate groups in COAS, Engineering and the USGS working on coastal erosion.
Facilities development (all campus-wide facilities):
The College secured major funding from the NSF Major Research Instrumentation program for the purchase of a high-field NMR instrument. Coupled with a successful proposal to the M. J. Murdock trust and matching funds from the Research Office, COS and the Department. This will be an important component of the OTRADI initiative and the recruitment of new Chemistry faculty.
The College led the planning for a new electron microscope facility and has arranged, with support from multiple Colleges, the Provost, and the Research Office, for the purchase of two new instruments. We are seeking funding for the third instrument through NSF MRI.
Noteworthy grants and research accomplishments.
OSU Science Education was ranked 9 out of 375 for faculty scholarly productivity in the Chronicle of Higher Education 2007
Tom Dick (Mathematics) is P.I. of the $4,999,947 National Science Foundation “Oregon Mathematics Leadership Institute Partnership Project,”
Ed Brook’s lab (Geosciences) received $750,000 to conduct research on the relationship between climate change and atmospheric CO2. Ed’s group is one of the premier research groups on the analytical side of the global field of climate research.
Roy Haggerty (Geosciences) obtained a $616,000 grant from DOE to study uranium contamination at Hanford, Washington.
Martin Schuster (Microbiology) published a high profile paper in Proceedings of the National Academy (USA) on cooperation and cheating in colonial bacteria. This paper is in an area of high current interest in which bacterial behavior serves as a useful model for studying the genetics of animal social behavior.
Elisar Barbar (Biochemistry and Biophysics) had a"new concept" paper on the role of Dynein Light Chain LC8 selected as a “Hot article” by the journal Biochemistry
John Falk (Science and Math Education) is involved in $14,000,000 worth of externally funded projects including the $5,000,000 NSF Informal Science Education Resource Center.
Janet Tate (Physics) and Doug Keszler (Chemistry)received NSF support "Bipolar Doping in wide-bandgap semiconductors", to continue their work on transparent semiconductors.
Michael Blouin (Zoology) had a paper in Science (Genetic effects of captive breeding cause a rapid, cumulative fitness decline in the wild. Science, 318: 100-103), showed that hatchery raised steelhead may not be the solution for augmenting natural numbers of this economically important salmonid.
Dee Denver (Zoology) was named a “Scientist to Watch” by The Scientist magazine – feature in October 2007 issue
c. Outreach and engagement
The members of the College spend significant effort on engaging with the public and our professional communities. The three major kinds of activities (and some prominent examples) include:
K-12 Enrichment Activities:
Dawn Wright and Geosciences host GIS Day when ~460 middle and high school students from Corvallis, Beaverton and Portland do GPS hikes, presentations, lab tours, GIS demos, map galleries in Corvallis.
The College continues to underwrite and organize Discovery Days, a hands on science exercise that draws thousands of elementary and middle school students to campus in fall and spring (over 5000 this year). This, and our work on Family Science Nights, was supported by a grant from the Women’s Giving Circle.
Geosciences participated in Da Vinci days in July 2007. A dozen student and faculty volunteers provided information on mineral resources, sustainability, water resources and GIS to over 1,000 visitors.
Chemistry students and faculty participated in 10 Family Science & Engineering Nights held at schools in Corvallis, Albany, Lebanon, and Wilsonville and hosted at least nine groups of elementary and middle school students who came to campus to experience hands-on chemistry activities. Many of these groups included a significant number of students from historically underrepresented groups and low-income families.
Jim Ketter and Dave Bannon (Physics) conducted a workshop on the physics of sound for approximately 25 middle-school teachers from Oregon under the auspices of the SMILE program.
Formal Science Communication:
The PISCO project (Zoology, Lubchenco and Menge) received support for public outreach from the Marisla Foundation and from the Resource Legacy Fund Foundation
Bob Lillie (Geosciences) was named the Education and Outreach Manager for the EarthScope Program of the National Science Foundation. His position is part of a 1.6 million dollar NSF grant recently awarded to COAS and Geosciences for the years 2007-2011.
Bob Lillie (Geosciences) is also leading the design of a set of exhibits on the Geology of Oregon for the lobby of the State Capitol Building in Salem. The OSU University Advancement Office and College of Science provided funds for OSU to develop the exhibits in collaboration with the Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, and Oregon Paleo Lands Institute.
Rubin Landau (Physics) led a workshop for college teachers in Computational Physics at a Gordon research Conference on Computational Physics Research and Education.
Public Testimony and Engagement:
Michael Blouin’s (Zoology) work will be featured as one of the first big research projects of the new Oregon Hatchery Research Center; the lab will be actively involved in designing materials to educate K-12 students and the general public on how principles of genetics and evolution apply to salmon conservation.
Mark Hixon (Zoology) is the Committee Chair of the Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee (2003-present): Subcommittee Chair (2003-2005), Committee Chair (2006-present) National Science Foundation Geosciences Directorate Advisory Committee (2006-present): Chair of Ocean Sciences Subcommittee (2007-present) for the NSF’s Geosciences Directorate.
Jane Lubchenco (Zoology) gave Testimony to the Joint Committee on Emergency Preparedness and Ocean Policy, Oregon Legislature on “The Science of Marine Reserves and participated in a Panel on Women in the Environmental Sciences, Panelist, at UC Santa Cruz.
John Falk (Science and Mathematics Education) is Co-PI for NSF Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education
d. Community and diversity
The College reconstituted the Community and Diversity Committee and has been working on assessing the results from last Spring’s climate survey. We have focused this year on trying to develop some expanded community activities in all Departments, including welcoming picnics, exit interviews for students, joint activities for student groups, etc. Some important actions included: