News & Special Announcements

Last update: May 8, 2008

Biology Majors Tapped for Phi Beta Kappa--the 2008-2009 list

Carrying on a long tradition, our Biology Majors have once again been well represented among those chosen for the nation's most prestigious academic honorary society, Phi Beta Kappa. Here's the latest list:

Class of 2009:
Stephen Ramey

Class of 2008:
Lindsey Collins
Amelia Crawford
Rachel Gillman
Kristen Harris
Aubrie Smits
Annette Trierweiler

Biology Student Earns Major Postgraduate Award (Photo from Furman Marketing and Public Relations Dept.)

Angel Cruz, class of 2008, has won a coveted Compton Mentor Fellowship making it possible for her to to carry out a year-long environmental project in El Salvador after graduation. The fellowship, worth $35,000, will make possible her project entitled “A Community Approach to Sustainable Agriculture in Rural El Salvador, which will be one of the first projects in El Salvador to approach sustainable agriculture within a community instead of with a single farm. Armando Marquez Ochoa, executive director of FUNDAHMER in El Salvador, will be Cruz’s mentor." (Quoted from the Furman news release.) This is not Angel's first award: she was an Associated Colleges of the South Environmental Fellow during the past two years, and was the 2007-2008 recipient of the Foothills Garden Club Scholarship. Congratulations, Angel!

Furman Awarded Howard Hughes Grant

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has announced that the science, mathematics, and education departments of Furman University have won a grant of $1.2 million for a 4-year program of interdisciplinary study and teaching focusing on the quantitative aspects of science. The Department of Biology will play a very prominent role in this program. New interdisciplinary concentrations in quantitative science and science education will be developed. Several new courses will be created for these programs. Each year 20 undergraduate students will be named Hughes Undergraduate Scholars. Furman students will have opportunities to do research on-campus, at the University of Florida, and at two esteemed HHMI research institutes abroad. The science and math departments (and their students) will also connect with high school and middle school students and teachers in summer and year-round mentoring programs. HHMI invited 224 colleges and universities to compete for 48 grants in this year's round.

Botany Leader Visits Biology Department

On May 5-7 Dr. Pamela Soltis, current President of the American Botanical Society has been on campus as this year's Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. In addition to visiting several classes and interacting individually with students and faculty, she gave two public lectures on conservation genetics of plants, her research specialty (see photo, above).

Biology Grad Authors Book

Tracey Tuberville, a 1993 graduate of our department, is co-author of a new book entitled Turtles of the Southeast, published by the University of Georgia Press. She has done research for a number of years at the Savannah River Ecology Lab, with Dr. Whit Gibbons (also co-author of the book). Good job, Tracey!

Dr. William Pielou, Emeritus Biology Professor, Dies

Dr. William Pielou, respected and beloved teacher of anatomy and ornithology, died in December 2007. He was a member of the Biology faculty from 1964 to 1991. Dr. Pielou taught hundreds of future physicians, dentists, and other health professionals the basics of anatomy.

Townes Science Center Construction Continues

If all goes well, we are approximately 4 months from expanding back into the completely renovated Plyler Hall. Currently, the Biology Department is squeezed into one of the two new wings of the Science Center (called Townes South, until a major donor appears), and our teaching classrooms are scattered among 4 buildings. We are sharing some lab rooms with Physics and EES, until all of our labs are completed. But the most important thing is that we are really appreciating the new offices and labs that have been completed.

For a complete description of the Townes Science Center project, click HERE.

Recent Biology Graduates Author Scientific Papers

From time to time we learn of our graduates who have become authors of papers describing their work (either during their time as undergraduates or later). Here are some that have appeared within the last year or so. Mollie Keaton is co-author (with two Furman faculty) of a paper on drought's effects on fish populations in streams, in Hydrobiologia. Goeff Mitchell is co-author of a paper in Oncogene, on the repression of the c-myc gene's transcription in mammary tumor cells. Fang Bu is co-author of a paper on proteins of the influenza virus in Vaccine. Katja Wolski is first author of a paper on the Sertoli-spermatid junctional complex, in the Journal of Andrology. Ryan McAuley is co-author of a paper in the Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, on effects of exposure to general anesthesia upon liver disease patients. Johnna Allen is co-author of a paper on chromosoal loci for a bacterial gene, in Infection and Immunity.