172 academics what’s name? in a Senior Katie Vaughan experiments with a laser during a lab class on Nov. 13. This physical science class was taught by chemistry professor Ed Wilson. Nick Michael Sophomore Brett Fielder participates in an experiment during his microbiology lab on Oct. 9. Biology Professor Dr. Steve Moore’s class experimented with many different chemicals throughout the year. Nick Michael During a chemistry lab on Nov. 13, junior Kun Luo participates in a labratory exercise by mixing chemicals during science professor Dr. Keith Schramm’s lab class. This was a freshman level chemistry lab that met every Thursday. Nick Michael The Pryor-England Science and Engineering Building was named after Don and Lynn England and Dr. Joe and Bessie May Pryor. Don England’s service spans four decades as a faculty member in the department of physical science, where he was the heart and soul of the university’s pre-medical program. His wife, Lynn England, taught for more than a decade in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences and was a worker for the Associated Women for Harding. Students in Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Rebekah Rampey’s advanced genetics class received the unique opportunity to take ownership of real scientific research and add their distinctive findings to the scientific community. The class studied the Arabidopsis plant as a model for genetic research. According to Rampey, the plant had been used by hundreds of researchers around the country in the last 15 years to learn more about plant growth and development. The main advantage of using Arabidopsis was that it had a fast life cycle, which allowed the class to study mutations in the offspring quickly and get results faster. It also had a small genome, so it was easier to track mutations. “Just like we have used mice in research to learn more about humans, we utilize Arabidopsis to learn more about wheat, tomatoes, etc.,” Rampey said. However, classes were not typically taught with this much emphasis on actual genetic research because laboratory work was expensive. In the fall of 2006, Rampey became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute participating faculty member alongside principal investigator, or director, Dr. Bonnie Bartel at Rice University. As a result, the Howard Hughes grant, which was very prestigious in the scientific community, gave Rampey enough funds to provide a genuine research laboratory class. “I have redesigned the advanced genetics laboratory course [BIOL 371] at Harding to provide junior and senior biology and biochemistry and molecular biology students with an opportunity to pursue independent, open-ended research projects in a laboratory setting,” Rampey said. “Each student in the course works completely on their own on a different project focused on a genetic experiment in Arabidopsis, yeast or bacteria.” Students in the class were required to spend at least four hours in the laboratory a week; however, some had to spend more time than this, depending on the particular experiment they were doing and the results they got. “I like doing the research,” senior biology major Garrett Sheumaker said. “It’s fun to me to do something that has never been done quite this way before and get results from it.” The class also shed light on the scientific process and showed why it was so useful to researchers. “I discovered that I like the scientific process, where you come up with a question and then make up an experiment to find and answer,” junior Lori Wheeler, who took the class for independent study, said. The projects that the students worked on were actual research pursuits that had never been done before. “We are working on small details of the plant that have never been documented or proven in the lab,” senior Luke Smelser said. “It is a unique piece of information that we get to add to the scientific community.” Rampey told her students on the first day of class that even if nothing worked for them the entire semester, it would teach them many valuable lessons about science and research. “This is the one science class where you are actually performing research like you actually would in a professional lab,” Smelser said. “You are working on the same kind of projects that a Ph.D. would be working on. It gives you a taste of what it would be like to do this sort of thing for a living.” Christie Cronk and Rachel Klemmer Growing Life Biology class identifies new genes in plants
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