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Assistant Professor Brownlee Awarded Collaborative Research Grant from NSF

Assistant Professor of Biology Emily Brownlee was recently awarded a $21,840 grant from the National Science Foundation for her project titled: Collaborative Research FSML: PhytoChop: An estuarine phytoplankton observatory (Award Number: 2022966). The two-year award began August 1, and will help fund Brownlee’s collaborative research with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES- Horn Point Laboratory).

With this grant, the researchers will establish the PhytoChop Coastal Observatory, an advanced autonomous instrument array designed to monitor the composition and photosynthetic activity of the phytoplankton community, together with water column nutrient and optical properties. The PhytoChop Coastal Observatory will be housed at Horn Point Laboratory’s research pier situated on the Choptank River, a tidal sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay.

Brownlee will be responsible for setting up and analyzing instrumentation data, and will help curate and expand the imaging library. Furthermore, Brownlee will coordinate with her collaborators at UMCES to synthesize results from the integration of Imaging FlowCytobot data with other PhytoChop instrumentation.

I’m excited to be a part of founding one of the first observatories to combine high-resolution plankton imaging and plankton health measurements at very small timescales. Along with measuring environmental parameters, this can provide unprecedented insight into how phytoplankton, such as those contributing to harmful algal blooms, are responding to long-term environmental and climate change. To have such an observatory on the Chesapeake Bay is a long-time dream of mine and I look forward to integrating observatory data into my courses and supplying St. Mary’s Project students with a lot of data in years to come!

 

Associate Professor Muchnick Collaborating on NSF Grant to Develop Interdisciplinary Systems Thinking Assessment Tool

Barry Muchnick, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, was recently awarded a three-year, $18,110 subaward as part of a $1.077 million National Science Foundation grant for a project titled: Developing a Next Generation Concept Inventory to Help Environmental Programs Evaluate Student Knowledge of Complex Food-Energy-Water Systems (NSF award number 2013373). The collaborative research project brings together researchers from University of Northern Colorado, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and nine other higher-education institutions across the country to develop a machine-learning program to assess students’ understanding of the connections among food-energy-water concepts in their classes. Their ultimate goal is to improve teaching in college-level environmental studies courses by helping instructors make evidence-based decisions on how to best shape their students’ understanding of complex systems thinking and sustainability concepts.

The 11 colleges and universities participating in the concept inventory development research. Graphic used with permission from University of Northern Colorado.

“Big data and the power of machine learning drive this project,” Muchnick said, “but ultimately we are interested in how best to reinforce interdisciplinary connections, especially with regard to food, energy, and water systems.” “I’m thrilled that St. Mary’s College of Maryland environmental studies students are part of a national research effort to more effectively train the next generation of environmental leaders.”

Muchnick’s teaching and scholarship is concerned with how natural and cultural systems interact to form our ecosystems, experiences, institutions, and imaginations.

Associate Professor Gijanto and Professor Larsen Awarded Three-year NSF Grant to Fund Student Research Experiences

Drs. Gijanto (center) and Larsen (right)

Liza Gijanto, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Randy Larsen, Professor of Chemistry, were recently awarded an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) grant focused on archaeological investigations of colonial Maryland (Award No. 1950646). The $368,278 grant will fund a multi-year research program for numerous students from across the U.S. 

Each summer during this NSF-REU program, 12 undergraduate students and their mentors will investigate the role of country estates in shaping Maryland society from the mid-17th until the early 19th century. This archaeology REU program is novel in terms of research focus, combining traditional field and laboratory techniques with cutting-edge collection management methods (archaeometry, mapping, dating, photogrammetry). Participants will also receive instruction in ethical curation that includes interpretation in both scholarly publications and museum exhibition. The eight-week program will be hosted by St. Mary’s College of Maryland, with field work occurring at the Cremona Estate in Mechanicsville, MD and collections management and conservation training done in collaboration with the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab) in St. Leonard, MD. The three-year project was scheduled to run in the summers of 2020, 2021 and 2022. However, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Gijanto and Larsen are working with NSF to delay implementation of the project by one year.

This comprehensive and innovative REU program will provide undergraduates with a first-class research experience in archaeology and state-of-the-art training in the latest scientific and methodological approaches to archaeological fieldwork, artifact curation, materials analysis, curatorial interpretation and public engagement with scholarly content. Drs. Gijanto and Larsen also seek to highlight the ongoing archaeological collections crisis, which is largely due to the separation of archaeological fieldwork from collections management and the lack of planning and resource allocation for the proper care of materials once they have been excavated. To investigate the research question and provide solid training in archaeology, students will learn: 1) the use of archaeological, archival, and spatial data to discern the role of country estates in shaping MD society; 2) the relationship between generating a collection and maintaining it; 3) archaeometry and materials characterization; and 4) public engagement through research presentations, publications and museum exhibition. This combination of research and state-of the art training available to early career, underserved students is currently unique among U.S. field schools.

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford Presents “CRISPR-Cas9 Genome Editing in the Cephalopod Doryteuthis (Loligo) pealeii” at the Annual Meeting for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford’s presentation was selected as an oral presentation in a complementary session in the 2020 SICB Symposium “Building Bridges from Genome to Phenome: Molecules, Methods and Models,” held January 3-7, in Austin Texas.

This presentation represents an important breakthrough for her research and impacts the work of many scientists studying the development, neurogenesis and evolutionary relationships of cephalopods, animals including: squid, octopus, cuttlefish and nautilus. It is an important “proof of concept” study demonstrating the first successful use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to employ genome editing in a cephalopod species. In this study, Crawford used the CRISPR-Cas9 system with specific RNA guides to the Tryptophan 2,3 dioxygenase enzyme (TDO) to specifically knock out the first step in the ommochrome pigment pathway in squid embryos. In English, this means that she successfully knocked out one gene to generate completely normal embryos lacking only reddish brown pigmentation. This work is in preparation for publication. Expanding the study of cephalopods to include predictable genome editing, the knocking out and knocking in of specific genes, opens an important door to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that drive normal development, neurogenesis, and behavior in cephalopods; a group of diverse and evolutionarily successful organisms that possess not only a camera like eye similar to our own along with the largest and most complex invertebrate brain on the planet, but also our imagination for their extraordinary life histories and complex cognitive behaviors.

While most of this work is performed at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, students working on their St. Mary’s Projects, often choose to explore fundamental questions of developmental biology of cephalopods by working with preserved embryos in the Crawford laboratory at SMCM. Last year, Sylvia Klein explored the role of Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) on two cephalopod species. As part of her SMP work, Sylvia was the first to observe the conservation of MAPK expression in the Pajama squid embryo, complementing studies Crawford had done with embryos of the long-finned squid, Doryteuthis pealii. Before graduate school, Sylvia, is expanding her experiences as a research assistant in the laboratory of Karen Echeverri at the MBL, where she is studying regeneration in both invertebrate and vertebrate species.

This work has most recently been supported by fellowships from the MBL to Crawford (2018, 2019), as well as a National Science Foundation – Enabling Discovery Through GEnomic Tools (EDGE) Grant to the MBL for which Crawford is a Principle Investigator. That grant supports the Cephalopod Strategic Initiative at the MBL.

Professor and Chair of Educational Studies Angela Johnson Awarded NSF Collaborative Research Grant

Angela C Johnson was recently awarded a $103,473 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of her project titled: Centering Women of Color in STEM: Data-Driven Opportunities for Inclusion. The two-year grant began September 2019, and will fund a continuation of Johnson’s collaborative research with Apriel Hodari of Eureka Scientific, Inc. to identify and share what helps women of color thrive in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

Johnson and Hodari have worked over the past two years with SMCM undergraduate students Rose Young ’20 and Elizabeth Mulvey ’20 to conduct and analyze interviews with faculty, staff, and students at SMCM and two United Kingdom institutions. The researchers compiled these fine-scale qualitative data from the interviews along with broad-scale quantitative data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) in collaboration with Eleanor Sayre, Associate Professor of Physics at Kansas State University. They then identified major themes to provide guidance for organizations committed to creating better, more inclusive, environments for women of color in physics, math, computer sciences and other typical STEM fields. Results thus far include surprising patterns about institutions where women of color study STEM fields, and have been shared at conferences in Washington DC and London, England. Results will also be shared at the winter meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in January 2020.

This recent award will allow the investigators to:

  • expand their dataset to additional STEM disciplines using data from IPEDS,
  • develop a public online portal for the final database and study user analytics to improve the portal’s utility,
  • identify institutions where higher than typical numbers or percentages of women of color graduate in each discipline and work with these institutions to serve as models or case studies for others, and
  • present research findings from the database and make STEM professionals aware of the portal.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1933383. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

SMCM Faculty and Staff Working to Transform Undergraduate Research

St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) was well represented and very well received at the second annual meeting of the Council on Undergraduate Research Transformations Project (CUR-T), funded by the National Science Foundation (Award no. 1625354). The inter-disciplinary SMCM team attending the conference included Drs. Mertz, Neiles, Bowers, Dillingham, Wooley, Koenig, and Foster.

SMCM faculty and staff at the November 2018 CUR conference

SMCM CUR Transformations Project Team Members at 2018 Conference (L to R: Drs. Mertz, Neiles, Bowers, Dillingham, Wooley, Koenig, and Foster)

The CUR Transformations Project aims to understand and incorporate successful strategies to integrate high-quality undergraduate research (UGR) throughout four-year undergraduate STEM curricula. SMCM’s contribution to this ambitious nation-wide endeavor focuses on undergraduate research integration in the disciplines of psychology and chemistry & biochemistry, and we have a committed team of 16 faculty and administrators working toward this goal.

The 2018 annual meeting allowed all 12 institutions participating in the CUR-T project to highlight their progress toward achieving project goals, and by all accounts our SMCM psychology and chemistry/biochemistry teams excelled and impressed. Congratulations to all of them, and please feel free to ask them about their CUR-T-related progress and insights. Each team works to create a more research-rich, connected, and scaffolded curriculum, and contributes to two major research questions: 1) What effect do student characteristics (e.g., preexisting academic preparation) have on scaffolded integration of UGR into the curriculum and student learning outcomes? 2) How do different STEM disciplines/departments effectively integrate the components and outcomes of high-quality UGR to reach more students? The CUR-T principal investigators received NSF funding to answer these pertinent questions in order to advance the academy’s understanding of effective teaching and learning and the disciplinary and cultural factors necessary for curricular integration and transformation. Collectively, we are at the cutting edge of STEM curricular transformations.

SMCM Chemistry CUR Conference PosterSMCM Chemistry Department CUR Transformations Project - November 2018 Poster

SMCM Psychology CUR Conference Poster

SMCM Psychology Department CUR Transformations Project - November 2018 Poster

 

Two SMCM Students Participate in Mathematics REU

Congratulations to the 12 students who presented their research on July 27, 2018 to conclude the SMCM Mathematics REU, a 7-week NSF-funded research experience for underrepresented students in mathematics who are early in their college careers. Over 100 students from across the country applied for the 12 positions. Two of the participants, Mariel Santos ’20 and Beth Thomas ’21, are undergraduates at SMCM. Santos’ team presented “Knots & Links: Local Moves & Polynomial Invariants.” Thomas’ team presented “Combating Tuberculosis: Using Time-Dependent Sensitivity Analysis to Develop Strategies for Treatment and Prevention.”

Mariel Santos (left) and Beth Thomas (right), just after presenting their REU research at SMCM

The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects specifically designed for the REU program.

Angela Johnson awarded grant to study women of color in STEM

Angela C Johnson, professor and department chair of Educational Studies, is interested in the challenges that women of color face in physics, math, computer science, and other similar fields. In preliminary research, Dr. Johnson has found that St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) may be on the right track in supporting these historically underrepresented students.

Johnson recently finalized a subaward agreement to serve as co-principal investigator on an NSF-funded project titled: Centering Women of Color in STEM: Identifying and Scaling Up What Helps Women of Color Thrive. Dr. Johnson is partnering with Dr. Apriel K Hodari of Eureka Scientific, Inc. on the project which will use data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to compare the inclusivity and success of women of color across college campuses.

Johnson will co-lead the overall project, manage the quantitative data collection, and contribute to data collection, coding, and analysis, and report production. Two SMCM students, Rose Young and Elizabeth Mulvey, will assist with data collection, including conducting interviews with women of color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Ultimately, the researchers hope to provide information to help guide organizations committed to creating supportive environments for women of color to thrive in STEM fields. The two-year project is scheduled to run through the summer of 2019.

St. Mary’s College Professor Collaborates on Research of Dryland Mosses

Kirsten Deane-Coe, Assistant Professor of Biology

Kirsten Deane-Coe, Assistant Professor of Biology

Kirsten Deane-Coe, Assistant Professor of Biology for St. Mary’s College of Maryland, was awarded $130,079 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Dimensions of Biodiversity Program. She will be working with collaborators to investigate the drivers of diversity in an ecologically important clade of dryland mosses.

Syntrichia is a large and diverse genus of mosses occurring worldwide and generally in dryland habitats. Despite its dominance in certain communities such as biological soil crusts, surprisingly little is known about the drivers of biodiversity in this clade according to the grant proposal.

Deane-Coe is a physiological ecologist and has spent much of her career studying dryland mosses. She explained that mosses are the second most diverse group of land plants next to angiosperms (flowering plants), and they play important ecological roles in terrestrial ecosystems.

“My role on the grant is to lead research that helps us gain insight into the comparative physiology of these dryland mosses with regard to the trait of desiccation tolerance.”

This important trait – the capability to dry without dying – allows many mosses to survive and reproduce even in drylands and may be the key to their survival in the face of rapid climate change.

The overall goal of the project is to understand the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that have produced and maintained diversity at different levels of organization (i.e. genes to ecosystems). The approach will include examining tradeoffs between asexual and sexual reproduction and between phenotypic plasticity and canalization into specialized genotypes.

“This is cutting edge research because my lab will be using novel imaging fluorescence techniques coupled with infrared gas analysis to examine variability in photosynthetic capacity in a diverse but understudied clade of dryland mosses,” says Deane-Coe. “We believe photosynthetic capacity under various hydration regimes directly relates to the degree of desiccation tolerance, a key trait that may give us insight into the drivers of biodiversity in these organisms.”

Deane-Coe is looking forward to the opportunity to involve students in the research, exposing them to unique organisms and plant physiology techniques they likely haven’t interacted with before.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,700 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.

The St. Mary’s College of Maryland Emerging Scholars Program – Research Experience for Undergraduates

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Professor of Mathematics Sandy Ganzell and Associate Professor of Mathematics Casey Douglas were awarded an important grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant supports a research program for undergraduate students, held at St. Mary’s College in 2016, 2018 and 2020. The seven-week program is funded by NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. The first cohort of students completed the program on July 29th.

The words Math R. E. U. are spelled out with sparklers at night

Students in the Emerging Scholars Program spell out “Math REU” with sparklers at night

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