February 1999
PKAL/CUR workshop "Issues of Mid-Career Faculty" (at Trinity College in San Antonio, TX)

Participants:
Dr. Verna Case, Dr. Pamela Hay, (Biology)
Dr. Clark Ross, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty

The workshop focused on faculty development issues at mid-career. While in attendance at the workshop, Davidson¹s team developed a plan to address the mid-career faculty needs and concerns at Davidson. This plan will encourage vitality in mid-career faculty by providing institutional resources for "retooling", full-year sabbaticals, faculty mentoring, etc. Implementation of the plan began at a retreat of departmental chairs to be help in August 1999.

February 1999
Training on Optimas Image Analysis System (at Vashaw Scientific)

Participant: Dr. Julio Ramirez

Dr. Julio Ramirez visited Vashaw Scientific in for training on the upgrade of the Optimas Image Analysis System purchased with the help of the HHMI grant. His visit gave him extensive training on the system and also allowed him to make recommendations for modifications of the software to make the program more student-friendly. The latest versions of the macros have been altered to accommodate these suggestions.

March 1999
JMP Workshop (in Cary, NC)

Participant: Patricia Peroni (Biology)

Selected Topics:

March of 1999
Visit to Davidson's Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory from Dr. Gary Dunbar

Dr. Dunbar trained Dr. Julio Ramirez (Biology) and his students in immunocytochemical techniques that are important additions to the neuroscience research program on hippocampal plasticity. The training gave Dr. Ramirez and his students the capacity to do both choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and dopamine (DA) immunocytochemistry. The ChAT immunocytochemical technique was used successfully in projects begun in April 1999. The DA immunocytochemical technique will be useful in courses in Behavioral Neuroscience and Advanced Neuroscience, as well as student research.

Spring 1999
Creating a WWW page (at Davidson College)

Workshop leader: Dr. Malcolm Campbell (Biology)

Dr. Campbell led two workshops this spring which focused on creating Web pages. The majority of the faculty in the biology department attended the first workshop and 5 biology faculty attended the second workshop. The first workshop led the faculty through the step-by-step process of creating a web page, inserting web links and files, and capturing images. The second workshop taught faculty how to use the digital camera and software to produce gif or jpg files and how to scan documents and images for inclusion on a web page. Fourteen courses in the Davidson biology curriculum now have web pages designed for use by students.

April 1999
Using JMP statistical software (at Davidson College)

Workshop Leader: Dr. Patricia Peroni (Biology)

Dr. Peroni held a workshop demonstrating the uses of JMP statistical software. Faculty from the biology and psychology departments who attended the workshop were introduced to JMP software and were given a copy of Dr. Peroni¹s handbook on JMP developed for use in her Biostatistics course. Participants in the workshop learned how to enter raw data and to import data from Excel. Sample statistics were run on the data, as well as t-tests, ANOVA and the Wilcoxan nonparametric test. Dr. Peroni discussed the appropriate uses of these statistical tests for various data sets and also discussed interpretation of the results of statistical analyses. A number of courses in biology currently make use of the JMP software including: Biology 112, Biostatistics and Experimental Design, Animal Behavior, Ecology and Animal Physiology.

September 1998
Project Kaleidoscope National Assembly (in Chicago)

Participant: Dr. Malcolm Campbell (Biology)

As a result of attending this meeting Dr. Campbell:

1. organized junior faculty at Davidson to act as a teaching support group;
2. assisted PKAL in forming a WWW biology editorial board;
3. met the director of BioSphere 2 and assisted in establishing a long-term relationship between Davidson and BioSphere;
4. continued collaborative efforts with Ralph Pillsbury, a teacher at Davidson IB middle school; and
5. will attend the week-long leadership workshop that is provided by PKAL in July 1999.

Selected Topics:

July 7 -10, 1998
Stella Workshop (in Woodstock, VT)

Participant: Patricia Peroni (Biology)

Stella is a software package that allows development and analysis of simulation models without knowledge of programming languages or differential equations. The instruction Peroni received at the workshop will allow her to use Stella to develop theoretical modelling modules that will be introduced first in the ecology course and then later in courses such as Animal Behavior. Dr. Peroni also presented a workshop on the applications of Stella to interested Davidson faculty earlier this year.

June 9 - 13, 1998
Association of Biology Lab Educators Conference (ABLE) (in Tallahassee, Florida)

Participants: Dr. Malcolm Campbell, Dr. John Williamson, Dr. Patricia Peroni (Biology)

Workshops Presented:

A novel approach to unify the curriculum by adopting isocitrate dehydrogenase as a model enzyme for laboratory protocols. (Campbell & Williamson)

Teaching students to use the Hardy-Weinberg Theory and its assumptions as a research tool. (Peroni)

July, 15 - 18 1997
JMP Data Discovery Conference (in Cary, North Carolina)

Participant: Dr. Patricia Peroni (Biology)

Produced by the SAS Institute, JMP is a data discovery software package that is user friendly and a less expensive alternative to either SAS or SPSS. The Data Discovery Conference provided Dr. Peroni, the department¹s biostatistics professor, with an in depth review of JMP¹s capabilities. The knowledge Dr. Peroni gained at the conference allowed her to make greater use of JMP¹s graphics in our introductory biology sequence (149 students and 4 faculty). Dr. Peroni also incorporated material from the conference into her ecology (24 students) and biostatistics (15 students) courses.

Selected Topics:

June 9 - 10, 1997
Digital Imaging Workshop (at Davidson College)
A two-day workshop on using NIH Image conducted by Dr. Bob Blystone of Trinity University.

Participants:
Dr. Malcolm Campbell, Dr. Pat Peroni, Dr. Don Kimmel (Biology)
Dr. Clarissa Jakobs and Dr. Suzette Polsen (Chemistry)
Katherine Okey and Scott Addison (Students--both biology majors)

Selected topics: