Botany honored by consortium
Miami University botany professors Susan Barnum and Linda Watson and Miami's botany department as a whole are recipients of a 2005 Distinguished Business Partners award. This award, given annually by the Miami Valley Tech Prep Consortium, was presented Jan. 19 at a luncheon at Sinclair Community College in Dayton. Award nominator Dan Prochaska, a science teacher at Talawanda High School, developed and teaches a biotechnology program through the Talawanda district, one of only a handful in the state. He credited Watson, Barnum and the Miami botany department with playing a major role in the program’s success. “Mentorship has provided our students with expertise in conducting and presenting student research projects: It has given our students a connection to the real world of scientific research. Faculty and graduate students have provided our classes with expertise in research and guided us through difficult topics such as bioinformatics. Advisory board members have offered important suggestions related to our curriculum and to skills needed in the field,” said Prochaska in his nomination.
The Miami Valley Tech Prep Consortium is a partnership among Sinclair, 58 public school districts and career centers in the Miami Valley and hundreds of business and community partners throughout southwest Ohio. Tech Prep programs stress mathematics, science, communication and technology. The consortium facilitates academic-technical training for high school students for a seamless transition to college and/or careers in high-demand, technologically driven fields.
Barnum’s research concerns cyanobacteria, a diverse group of oxygenic, photosynthetic bacteria inhabiting virtually every major aquatic and terrestrial biome, including extreme hot and cold regions. Some species are major suppliers of fixed nitrogen and, thus are important in nutrient-depleted soil. Her lab’s objectives are to study the evolution of nitrogen fixation genes and the origin and excision of large DNA sequences found within several genes that have a role in nitrogen fixation. Barnum’s undergraduate textbook, Biotechnology: An Introduction, in its 2nd edition, is the best-selling text of its kind. It recently was translated into Chinese.
Watson’s research program is focused on using molecular phylogenetics to address systematic and evolutionary questions in plants and in using molecular markers to understand patterns of biogeography and species diversification. She is chair of Miami’s botany department.
|
|
Susan Barnum |
Linda Watson |
|
