Teaching:  Human Dissection and Anatomy, Human Anatomy, Histology, Nutrition

This is the third year that we have been in Sampson Hoffland Laboratories and the facilities are wonderful.  The anatomy lab has special drawers for storing cats with air-flow through the drawers into a duct system in the walls thus reducing preservative fumes dramatically.  The human dissection lab has lots of room with surgical lighting for dissection, changing rooms for students, facilities for washing lab coats, and MPR classical music coming from the ceiling speakers. 

I started teaching Human Dissection and Anatomy in 1997.  At that time the course was only offered during January term to 12 seniors.  A fall semester human dissection course was added in 2000, increasing the number of students to 40.  As costs for obtaining human donors continued to increase, I started a Human Anatomy Lab Endowment in 2002, asking graduating seniors to consider pledging to this fund.  Today the endowment stands at $82,000 and has allowed us to get a total of 5 cadavers for this academic year.  This year 60 Luther seniors--biology majors, nursing students and others--have the opportunity to do human dissection and upper level anatomy study.  The new lab is a very busy place.

Three years ago I wrote the dissector that we use in the human dissection lab.  It works well in a course where I can’t be directly supervising all areas of dissection going on at once.  Students take much of the responsibility for completing their dissections, becoming “experts” in their areas, and teaching others in their lab group.  It’s a new experience for many of them – to have this kind of responsibility not only for their learning but also for the education of the others in their dissection group.   

Histology occupies the anatomy lab during spring semester.  I have always loved histology for its ability to tie together so many biological concepts that students have previously studied.  When we moved into SHL, we got a new set of microscopes dedicated to histology.  No more cleaning immersion oil off the high dry lenses!  I have also written the histology lab manual that gives detailed description of all the slides that we use in that lab.  Students become quite good at discerning diagnostic features of the tissues they are studying. 

I also teach Principles of Nutrition during spring semester.  I have mostly nursing students, elementary education majors and many seniors completing their science requirement for graduation.  It’s fun to teach a course with practical application.  My goal is to have students be able to critically look at nutrition information and have the ability to appropriately question and evaluate the content.

In April, 2000, we announced the establishment of the Russell R. Rulon Endowed Chair in Biology.  Russ had been one of my mentors when I was a Luther student (many years ago!).  It took two years and thousands of letters and phone calls, but a committee of biology alumni and I succeeded in getting over 900 alumni and friends of Russ Rulon to pledge $1.14 million to establish the endowed chair.  Somehow we were able to keep it a secret from Russ until April 28, 2000, when the chair was announced at a celebration dinner.  Since that time, Drs. Jim Eckblad, Kevin Kraus and Marian Kaehler have all been holders of the chair using the funding for a wide variety of research projects with students.

I have been the faculty advisor for Luther’s Health Sciences Club since 2000, and I continue to do a lot of academic advising, especially for students interested in the health sciences.   I really enjoy advising students as it is an opportunity to help them realize their dreams.   This past summer for the first time I paired my new first year advisees with upper class advisees by email.  This gave the first year students someone to answer their questions and to welcome them to campus.  My upper class advisees also come to the first semester group advising sessions to provide practical suggestions for how to get the most out of the first semester at college.   It’s been a great experience so far for all of us.

On the home front, my spouse, Jim, has retired from beekeeping although he is still very active in maple syrup production.  Tom is a wild land firefighter with the National Park Service.  He lives in the mountains at the entrance to King’s Canyon National Park in California—the world’s second largest tree, the General Grant sequoia, is a short hike from his house.   Mark is a chemist with Sigma-Aldrich in Madison, WI, and a volunteer fireman with the Shorewood Hills Fire Department.  My grandfather was a captain in the La Crosse Fire Department many years ago, so perhaps this interest in firefighting has a genetic component to it.