Research in the classroom

Ginger teaching

Effective science education for the next generation must keep pace with the state of field, and so we have actively sought opportunities to develop new education experiences, bring state of the art equipment to our institution, and integrate this equipment into both Team Dendrite's research and teaching. Classroom Teaching

THANKS TO THE NSF FOR SUPPORTING COOL NEW IMAGING EQUIPMENT (FEI Quanta scanning electron microsope, Leica SP5 Confocal) AT WHITMAN! Team Dendrite is part of the project to bring a new scanning electron microscope to Whitman. Jeff Sterritt ('11) used the new SEM to analyze neuron-glial interactions. We presented his data at the IBRO meeting in Florence, IT, July 2011.

Teaching in the classroom

Support from Whitman's Innovation in Teaching Fund and the Teagle Foundation's "Teaching Big Science At Small Schools" similarly enabled development of the new project with Wallace, "Integrative activities to study the evolution of the nervous system. See the project described at:

Over the last several years, we have collaborated with faculty from other liberal arts colleges to create new course modules that merge genomics with gene product localization (see the Teaching Big Science at Small Schools project).

Confocal image

Whitman's new confocal is helping us to gather images that allow us to look at neuron growth on nanosprings (a collaboration with David McIlroy's lab, Department of Physics, U. Idaho), analyze neuron-glial interactions, and advance our live cell imaging capabilities. Above, a section from rat brain, triple stained to show nuclei (blue), astroglia (green) and dendrites of neurons (red).