Faculty Notes: Community Science |
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WASH THE SHEEP AT THE FAMILY FARM. Introduce Algebra Institute students to the Little Giant supercomputer. Check email for messages from the National Institutes of Health. Spend the afternoon on research with summer interns. And don鈥檛 forget the 4-H Board meeting.
If the items on chemistry professor Scott Feller鈥檚 typical summer day to-do list seem disparate, there鈥檚 a method to his madness.
Feller says, "The best way to hook a student on science is to work with him one-on-one on a problem that neither professor nor student knows the solution to."
And that goal is where the day鈥檚 tasks converge.
Even the 4-H Board meeting.
But this morning the nine-year 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 veteran is most excited about the presentation that students from the College鈥檚 summer business immersion program made to the 4-H Board.
Feller became a member of 4-H fairgrounds planning committee after years of helping daughter Amanda and son Jake care for and show an ever-growing herd of sheep, goats, and pigs from the family鈥檚 farm. Scott and his wife Wendy both come from farming families in Oregon, and they bought a 10-acre farm in northern Montgomery County to anchor their children鈥檚 lives in their agricultural heritage. The Feller Farm also became a place for faculty friends and their families to get back in touch with the rural lifestyle.
This year, Feller is helping the board plan a new 4-H fairgrounds, and after he learned that the College鈥檚 fledgling Business Immersion Program was looking for creative projects, he brought the board and 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 together.
The work didn鈥檛 exactly fit his research model of working one-on-one with a professor, but the students certainly faced plenty of unknown solutions.
"Students always come up with ideas we don鈥檛 think of, and these guys were no exception," Feller says. "I was really proud of them. And I hope it makes for some nice connections between the College and 4-H."
Seeing himself the member of a 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 community within the Crawfordsville community, Feller believes 4-H offers opportunities for more collaboration between the College and town.
"Relations between the College and the town will improve when individuals get to know each other and learn about each other鈥檚 skills," Feller says matter-of-factly. "Find something you can work on together and you鈥檒l realize that you could always have gotten along just fine."
COLLABORATION IS AT THE HEART OF FELLER鈥橲 WORK.
"Scientific progress is a community activity," Feller says.That realization may be the greatest benefit for students working with him on the NIH research, in which scientists from across the country exchange results and ideas throughout the research process.
"If you鈥檙e going to fill in the gaps of our knowledge, that鈥檚 where you need to work. And students will see that things are happening at these intersections of seemingly unrelated areas, new fields of research, like biophysics, where the person who does the research is actually a 0chemist.
"And they see that there are unknowns out there, that there are ways they can actually contribute."
4-H PROJECTS OR SUMMER RE新澳门六合彩开奖直播 ON or off campus, it all comes back to Feller鈥檚 basic premise: The best way to train students in the sciences is to work one-onone with them on a problem with no known solution.
新澳门六合彩开奖直播 chemistry majors taste that early, working with faculty as research partners in their freshman or sophomore summers. They present their results at poster sessions and at the Celebration of Student Research, and this year a group presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemistry Society.
"They learn an essential fact in both these situations," Feller says: "Science isn鈥檛 science until it is shared."
By their junior summer they鈥檙e ready for off-campus internships, and Feller proudly points to 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 seniors Steven Rhodes and Syud "Taz" Momtaz Ahmed as examples. Rhodes spent this summer at the National Institutes of Health鈥檚 Laboratory for Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics.Ahmed was engaged in materials chemistry research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
"Taz and Steven have taken all the same courses and did their first research project together in Professor Lon Porter鈥檚 lab," Feller explains. "Then we threw them into these two completely different environments and projects, and they both thrived.
"By working one-on-one in the lab with Lon at the very early stages of their scientific careers, they learned the habits of mind that favor success in science鈥攎aking observations, making interpretations, bringing that together with what is known, and working with a professor as a colleague on what is unknown.That鈥檚 hard to beat when you鈥檙e preparing students in science."
Feller harkens back to friend and mentor, the late Paul McKinney.
"Paul used to say to me, 鈥榃e鈥檝e got to find ways for students to show their creativity,鈥� and he meant within the context of chemistry. For Paul, one part of this creativity was creating original solutions, and that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e doing here."
FELLER BELIEVES THAT WHAT鈥橲 GOOD for the student is good for the 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 scientist and teacher. He recalls a recent conference in Vermont where a professor from another college was complaining that student involvement was slowing his research.
"And he probably could move things along more quickly in the short term," Feller admits. "But in the long term, working with students helps you think through the important questions.
"The greatest motivator for thinking through a hard problem is knowing that a student is going to come talk with you about it. It鈥檚 easy to stop thinking about a hard problem and just grade lab reports or answer email. But if you know a student is coming by because he鈥檚 been working on this problem, you鈥檇 better have something to talk with him about!"
Contact Professor Feller at fellers@wabash.edu
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Early in his tenure at 新澳门六合彩开奖直播, Feller won grants from the National Science Foundation to create and update the Little Giant parallel supercomputer, capable of running molecular modeling and other simulations that assist teaching and research in the sciences and mathematics. More recently, he teamed with other researchers to win a $6.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health that is putting 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 students in the middle of a nationwide collaboration in nanomedicine. Last year, he helped 新澳门六合彩开奖直播 host a meeting of the Council of Undergraduate Research, and he was a co-founder of the College鈥檚 Celebration of Student Research and Creative Work.