Ursinus student Amy Galvin 2014, won a national award, as she and JinSun Kim, also Class of 2014 presented research with Dr. Beth Bailey, Associate Professor of Biology, at the Experimental Biology Meeting held in Boston, Mass., at the end of the spring semester.

Amy and Jin presented a poster titled “Exercise Enhances Inotropic Responsiveness of Cardiac Myocytes.” Co-authors on the poster were recent graduates Jacob Kohler, Lianna Foster-Bey and Bailey.
At a special undergraduate poster session, Amy Galvin received the David Bruce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. She was one of 13 students of 128 applicants to receive this award. She was first selected as a finalist based on her abstract, a personal statement and letter from her research mentor. Twenty-six finalists were named as David S. Bruce Outstanding Undergraduate Abstract Award Winners. Those finalists were then interviewed by two different panels of judges at the Experimental Biology Meeting, and the 13 Excellence in Undergraduate Research awardees were selected.
The David S. Bruce Awards were created in 2004 in memory of David S. Bruce, Ph.D., from Wheaton College and honor his commitment to promoting undergraduate involvement in research, in the APS annual meeting, and, ultimately, in research careers. The Buce Awards are given annually to undergraduate students who submit first-author abstracts to and present their research at the Experimental Biology meeting.

Dr. Richard Wallace of the Department of Environmental Studies and his frequent collaborator, Dr. Susan Clark of Yale University, are running a symposium at the annual meeting of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences in June in Pittsburgh.

Interdisciplinarity is everywhere – or at least the claim of it is. But what does it really mean to the people who self-identify with the term? What is its history? What are the prospects for its future application in higher education and applied problem solving? Dr. Wallace and Dr. Clark address these issues in their symposium, which is titled “Interdisciplinarity: A Concept in Search of Guidelines and Practicality.” It will include the unveiling of results of research conducted by Drs. Clark and Wallace, with Dr. David Mattson (Yale) on perceptions of interdisciplinarity among students and faculty in environmental studies. The national study was conducted by survey this past winter. Complementing the presentation of that research will be Dr. Wallace’s talk on the history of interdisciplinarity in higher education and its influence on the formation of the field of environmental studies (the subject of his current book manuscript) and a presentation by Dr. Clark on the formative challenges of undertaking substantive interdisciplinary practice.

Dr. Wallace and Dr. Clark have been collaborating for more than 20 years on the application of interdisciplinary problem solving methods to various complex challenges in the environmental realm. They have published more than two dozen papers together and run numerous workshops and symposia for academic and other professional audiences.

Ursinus Summer Fellow Charlie Lee 2014 is in the trenches of a national focus on the long-term impact of concussions on athletes. He is spending his summer exploring the changes that occur in the brain after an athlete suffers a concussion.

Charles Lee 2014 collects data by performing EEG (electroencephalogram, a test used to record electrical activity of the brain) on concussed students and unconcussed students.

Lee, from Cerritos, Calif., is collecting and analyzing data from Ursinus athletes and students to research, The Effect of Concussions on Cognitive Ability within Athletes. He will examine how concussions, the result of blunt force or blow to the head, may cause changes in the chemical balance within the brain. This can affect the behavior and cognitive ability of affected individuals, says Lee. “The concept that a minor injury could snowball into permanent detrimental effects drew me in,” says Lee, who is
working with Joel Bish, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, Chair Neuroscience Coordinator.

“Charlie’s research looking at the appropriateness of the ImPACT test at assessing cognitive deficits following concussions relates to a test used nationwide at many high schools and colleges for assessing concussions,” says Bish. “He’s working to determine whether there are specific cognitive skills that are susceptible to damage following
concussions.  Specifically, we are interested in whether impulse control,
or the ability to control ones actions, is one of the critical cognitive functions that may have a lasting deficit.  Since control underlies virtually all behavior, deficits in impulse control are extremely damaging, although difficult to measure.”

Many healthcare professionals use ImPACT (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing), a computerized neurocognitive assessment tool, to evaluate an athlete’s ability to return for play, he says. Current research seeks to compare ImPACT testing results and a composed battery of cognitive tests including the Stroop Test,
Erickson-Flanker, Splotch Memory, Go – no go, Number Stroop, and Shape-Color
Memory, Lee says.  “During Fellows, I will be collecting more data by performing EEG (electroencephalogram, a test used to record electrical activity of the brain) on concussed students and unconcussed students. Using the data, I should be able to understand the differences in cognitive ability between concussed and unconcussed individuals. This study seeks to perform statistical analysis on the compiled data in order to compare the accuracy of ImPACT and the validity of the test in a long term scale.”

Ready to play – and learn? Assistant Professor of History Susanna Throop will employ an innovative way to teach the past by having her students take on the roles of historic figures and solve problems in the language and culture specific to the times of those figures.

Pioneered by Barnard historian Mark C. Carnes, Reacting to the Past (RTTP) has been implemented at over 300 colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. RTTP seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills. Throop attended the Reacting to the Past Faculty Institute at Barnard College from June 6-June 9, 2013, with partial funding from the Mellon Teaching and Learning Initiative.

Susanna Throop, Assistant Professor of History

In most classes students learn by receiving ideas and information from instructors and texts, or they discuss such materials in seminars. In RTTP courses, students learn by taking on roles, informed by classic texts, in elaborate games set in the past; they learn skills—speaking, writing, critical thinking, problem solving, leadership, and teamwork—in order to prevail in difficult and complicated situations. That is because RTTP roles, unlike those in a play, do not have a fixed script and outcome. While students will be obliged to adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they have been assigned to play, they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas persuasively, in papers, speeches or other public presentations; and students must also pursue a course of action they think will help them win the game.

RTTP games are interdisciplinary, globally diverse, and set in virtually every historical period, from ancient Athens to Copenhagen, 2009. More information and videos of students engaged in RTTP courses can be found at https://reacting.barnard.edu/.

Professor Throop will be running the RTTP program Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament in her fall course, History 150: The Tumultuous Reign of Henry VIII. She also hopes to discuss how the RTTP program might support the Ursinus mission with other Ursinus faculty and administrators.

Summer Fellow Matt Hope and HHMI FUTURE Mentor Andrew Kane attended the Ploegh Symposium at the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with their research mentor, Associate Professor Rebecca Roberts (Biology and BCMB). Both students are rising seniors and majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The symposium was a day-long celebration of Prof. Roberts’ postdoctoral mentor, Dr. Hidde Ploegh. The students attended the presentations given by the leading  scientists from across the globe and enjoyed a boat tour along the Charles River. They met Dr. Jack Strominger, who was the first scientist to purify the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) – a molecule central to the projects that Matt and Andrew are working on this summer at Ursinus.

The FUTURE program is part of the grant given by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to establish the Center for Science and the Common Good.

Supported by a $243,000 grant from The Teagle Foundation, Ursinus College will lead a group of four national liberal arts colleges to identify best practices in “gateway courses,” such as common core curricula and first year programs and seminars, and then to communicate the benefits of liberal education to a wider audience.

In addition to Ursinus, Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisc., will look at how core courses help students develop the judgment needed in their careers and in their lives. The 2.5-year project, Gateways to Liberal Education, aims to invigorate liberal education in American colleges.

In a series of four conferences beginning this summer at Ursinus College, faculty from the four schools will discuss ways in which interconnected seminars or common syllabi identify essential texts, skills, and experiences that prepare students for fulfilling careers and lives as responsible citizens after college. The conferences will also explore issues such as benefits to faculty teaching such courses, how common inquiry can bond faculty and students, and how colleges can assess what they are accomplishing. Later conferences will be open to faculty from other schools interested in incorporating similar pedagogies and courses in their general education programs.

An anticipated outcome of the Teagle project is the publication of a volume of essays directed at academia and prospective parents and students that makes the case for this approach to liberal education.

“At a time when there is widespread criticism of higher education, this grant is an encouraging sign that what certain liberal arts colleges have been doing is cause for hope in the future,” said Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Lucien “Terry” Winegar, who coordinated the Ursinus faculty writing of the proposal. “That Ursinus was invited to apply for and administer the grant shows there is external validation in our practice of liberal education.”

Resisting the trend toward over-specialization in undergraduate education, Ursinus has long been committed to its hallmark Common Intellectual Experience (CIE). A two-semester common syllabus core course required of all first-years, the CIE uses texts to engage students in discussing three perennial questions: How should one live? What does it mean to be human? What is the universe and my place in it? Students live in the same residence halls so that the discussion of those questions go beyond the classroom to permeate co-curricular life. As stated in the grant proposal, “. . . we believe that these courses introduce an education that best prepares students for fulfilling careers and lives as citizens and human beings… examination of our gateway courses aim to clarify, for the public and for the academy, the reasons for this belief.”

According to President Bobby Fong, “When general education has been most often a series of disparate distribution requirements, Ursinus made the commitment to declare what are central questions, texts, and analytic skills that all students at the College should have in common. The traditional four-year college experience should be a time for students to discover their passions and to test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers.”

The partner schools offer the following programs:

Ursinus College:

Resisting the trend toward over-specialization in undergraduate education, Ursinus has long been committed to its hallmark Common Intellectual Experience (CIE). A two-semester common syllabus core course required of all first-years, the CIE uses texts to engage students in discussing three perennial questions: How should one live? What does it mean to be human? What is the universe and my place in it? Students live in the same residence halls so that the discussion of those questions go beyond the classroom to permeate co-curricular life.

“When general education has been most often a series of disparate distribution requirements, Ursinus made the commitment to declare what are central questions, texts, and analytic skills that all students at the College should have in common,” said
President Bobby Fong. “The traditional four-year college experience should be a time for students to discover their passions and to test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers.”  

Lawrence University:

Lawrence University’s multidisciplinary Freshman Studies program exposes students to enduring works in the humanities, fine arts, and social and natural sciences to foster students’ abilities to think critically, write effectively, and speak persuasively. Initiated in 1945, the multi-disciplinary course awakens first-year students to the excitement of liberal learning. Spanning two terms of a three-term academic year, Freshman Studies is taught by faculty members from all disciplines in small sections of approximately 15 students.

Rhodes College:

Rhodes College provides a comprehensive experience that links a rigorous academic program with experiential learning in the community. The Rhodes vision embraces the college’s commitment to a values-based liberal arts education that is grounded in the 12 “foundation” requirements that emphasize students’ integrating their in-class work with research and experiential learning outside the classroom.

College of the Holy Cross:

At Holy Cross, the only exclusively undergraduate Jesuit college in the nation, every first-year student enrolls in a small, intensive, full-year seminar designed to develop critical thinking, writing and communication skills in the context of a particular topic or theme. Students choose from a variety of seminars in a range of academic disciplines, and seminars are then grouped into five interdisciplinary thematic clusters, each of which incorporates a number of shared texts, lectures, panel discussions, field trips, or other events. Moreover, the students in each cluster are housed together in a residence hall to facilitate discussion of ideas from multiple perspectives outside of the classroom. The program is called Montserrat, after the mountain in Spain where Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, chose to begin a new life devoted to study, teaching, service, faith, and purpose.

The grant concurs with The Teagle Foundation’s interest in seeking and supporting courses and programs that equip students to deal effectively with questions of meaning,
value, and responsibility that will persist throughout their lives.

“Recently, higher education in general and liberal education in particular have come in for intense criticism,” said Paul Stern, Professor of Politics at Ursinus College and a member of the grant team. “There are genuine concerns regarding its cost, its efficiency, and its value in a student’s life. The Teagle grant affords us the opportunity to respond to these concerns on behalf of liberal education. It’s our responsibility to explain to the public the worth of an education that focuses on enduring human questions.”

The grant accords with the Teagle Foundation’s interest in seeking and supporting courses and programs that equip students to deal effectively with questions of meaning, value, and responsibility that will persist throughout their lives.

The Ursinus grant team includes Dr. Stern, Professors of Biology Robert Dawley and Rebecca Kohn; Associate Professor of Biology Rebecca Lyczak; Assistant Professor of Physics Thomas Carroll; Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies Phillipa Townsend, Coordinator of Research and Sponsored Programs Charlene Wysocki and Dean Terry Winegar. More information can be found on the Teagle web site.

With graduation behind him, Jayant Velagala 2013, a Mathematics major, is busy preparing for his first year in University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey -New Jersey Medical School this September.

Jayant Velagala 2013

He will begin his medical school studies with rigorous research experience acquired at Ursinus. As a student, he focused on creating models that mathematically incorporate hospital conditions and illustrate how hospital-acquired infections can be controlled and prevented. The hope, says Velagala, is that the models eventually serve as useful tools to various hospitals and ICU’s providing insights into how best to implement preventive measures.

“In a system that currently aims to limit healthcare costs and increase efficiency, there has been a shift in emphasis towards the prevention of disease caused by Antibiotic-Resistant Infections,” says Velagala, who worked with Mohammed Yahdi, Associate Professor of Mathematics. Yahdi presented at the International Conference on Antibiotic-Resistant Infections: Mathematical Modeling, Transmission Dynamics and Control in 2012. The conference, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was held at the University of Miami in December. Yahdi’s talk was titled, “Parameter Analysis and Optimal Control of a VRE Model,” and was based on research that involved Ursinus students.

Why the Research Matters:

Nosocomial infections claim about 100,000 lives per year and are due to the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria throughout the intensive care unit. About one-third of infections contracted in (ICU’s) are caused by Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE).

“Of the many preventive measures used to reduce the incidence of these infections, we are interested in the use of chlorhexidine baths, which reduces transmission between health care workers, hospital surfaces and patients by reducing the density of skin colonization of these bacteria,” says Valagala.

The models are comprehensive in that they can give a global view, he says, but can also look at the progress of an individual though an ICU and the daily risk of acquiring an infection given the appropriate VRE dynamics.  Stochastic differential equations and  Time-Markov Chain modeling approaches were used to  incorporate the uncertainty and randomness intrinsic in this context. Ideally, the models show at what stages and under what parameters, chlorhexidine baths can be most effective in the prevention of VRE infections.

“Doing this can reduce contact contamination between patients, health care workers and medical equipment,” he says. “Previous studies have shown that the use of chlorhexidine baths and hydrogen peroxide vapors have reduced VRE infections in ICU’s by at least 50 percent.”

A review of In The Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform (Penn Press) by Associate Professor of Education John P. Spencer, appeared recently on www. philly.com. The reviewer, Nathaniel Popkin, who writes the Art Attack blog for the Philadelphia news site, calls the book “excellent.” He writes, “It places the apparently never-ending question of how to improve our schools within the contexts of shifting demographics, economic change, and clashing ideologies.” The review states. “Spencer is particularly good setting Foster amidst the layers of civil rights and political reform of the 1960s—from self-help to desegregation to black power—and telling the story in plain language through Foster’s real world tests at Dunbar Elementary in North Philly and the Octavius Catto School in West Philly.”  See more about the book here.