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Biology Department 2009 Strategic Plan

1. Executive Summary Over the next 5-10 years, the Department of Biology will establish itself as a national resource for integrative biology. Its faculty will conduct multi-disciplinary research with collaborators both inside and outside the University and will investigate large-scale biological processes such as evolution, brain function, the impact of climate and disease on populations across the globe, and the function of complex molecules. The Department will investigate these processes in animals, plants and microbes. The Department will be a locus within the University for the application of quantitative methods and mathematical modeling to biological problems of every kind. Retiring faculty will be replaced by hires that strengthen research clusters in the Department. The Department will lead in the creation of a campus-wide Center for Sensory Neuroscience that will conduct significant translational research into the origins and treatment of sensory and brain disorders. The Department will establish research clusters in Evolutionary Genetics and in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Evolutionary Genetics is a strong area of current research within the department and is a key to understanding the structure and function of the many genomes now sequenced. Evolutionary Developmental Biology has recently come to the forefront of biomedical science because genes that direct the development of body plans in a variety of animals have also been shown to cause human disease. Graduate students will conduct interdisciplinary studies within concentration areas belonging to the new Biological Sciences Graduate Program (BISI). The Department’s efforts in every area of graduate education will be supported by training grants for predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees, and by equipment grants. More postdoctoral trainees will be recruited and supported on grants. The undergraduate curriculum will include a greater emphasis on the use of mathematics and physics to explain biology. Lower level physics and mathematics classes will prepare students for this curriculum. A much larger group of undergraduates will be enrolled and graduated from the Ecology and Evolution specialization of the Biological Sciences major, contributing to the societal need for more graduates with a strong grasp of the science needed to understand and address underlying threats to our environment. Curriculum improvement grants from agencies and foundations will support this curriculum revitalization and provide enriching and innovative laboratory classes. The Department will improve its administrative structure and work with the College to coordinate its administrative functions with the other departments within the College. Staff will be cross-trained so as to be able to fill-in for each other. Faculty and graduate student diversity will continue to improve, so that we will have a cohort of 5-10 faculty and 25% of our graduate students of both genders from under-represented groups. We will increase the percentage of our female faculty from its current 33% towards 50%.

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Research Action Plan Summary

Through hiring, the creation of research clusters and multi-investigator grants, we will:

o Build research that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries within Evolutionary Biology and Ecology.

o Form a research cluster in Evolutionary Genetics o Build Evolutionary Developmental Biology. o Build a campus Center in Sensory Neuroscience. o Expand quantitative, computational and biophysical approaches in all areas

• Increase the number of postdoctoral researchers in the Department. • Continue to upgrade our animal facilities and core equipment. • Emphasize research mentoring in our peer review process.

Graduate Education Action Plan Summary

• Promote interdisciplinary research and quantitative approaches for students across all of the proposed concentration areas of BISI.

• Teach graduate courses across BISI that exemplify the Department’s approach to biological problem solving.

• Reduce reliance on TA’s through training grants and individual investigator awards • Average Ph.D. completion within five years

Undergraduate Education Action Plan summary

Faculty will include or expand elements in their courses that highlight the Department’s mission. For example:

o Mathematical Biology o Evolutionary approaches o Interdisciplinary approaches

Launch re-evaluations of syllabi across “vertical” swathes of the BSCI curriculum Attract more students into the upper level Ecology and Evolution specialization area Task teams of faculty and instructors with obtaining external funding. Achieve an upper level course size limit of 60 students.

Staff Action Plan Summary

Complete cross-training of staff to enhance flexibility in the tasks that they perform, so that they can overlap tasks and stand-in for one another.

Collaborate with other units in the College to adopt uniform, parallel structures for administrative and technical staff that conform to best practices.

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2. Overview of Department a. Narrative of the purpose and focus of the Department and how it fits into the mission of the college and campus [see Appendix I for detailed description and data]

The Department of Biology is committed to taking an integrative approach to the fundamental mechanisms of life. We study plant, animal, and microbial species. Our research and teaching is guided by a multidisciplinary approach and quantitative analysis. We train students to solve problems by integrating knowledge and experimental approaches from different fields of investigation within modern biology. Using this approach, we investigate the determination of molecular function by physical forces; the evolution, development, and behavior of species; the influence of experience on sensory and brain function; and the survival of populations and species threatened by disease and climate change.

The Department of Biology contributes several unique strengths to the College of Chemical and Life Sciences (CLFS) and to the University: a) We have built a very strong group in evolutionary biology and ecology, with an international

reputation. Using this research expertise, faculty members lead an M. Sc. Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology that has trained leaders in national and state agencies and foundations. We have recently extended our efforts in evolutionary biology by establishing a group to study the evolution of developmental processes. This is a comparatively young field that is unique on campus, and one of the few research groups in the nation that study how body plans and developmental mechanisms have evolved. The National Institutes of Health has supported the work of our investigators in this field because of its interest in the genetics of developmental diseases and in genome structure and function.

b) We are the only department in CLFS with a substantial contribution to campus efforts in

neuroscience, conducting research in cellular neurobiology and neural systems. Our faculty members lead campus-wide neuroscience graduate and undergraduate training programs, including an internationally acclaimed program in auditory neuroscience.

c) Together with other CLFS and University departments, our expertise in biophysics and in

quantitative biology is creating new programs, courses, and learning tools for graduates and undergraduates in biophysics and mathematical biology.

Achievements under the broad themes of the 2004 College Strategic Plan Sensory Neuroscience. Since 2004, we have hired four Assistant Professors in the area of sensory neuroscience (Drs. Araneda, Butts, Kanold, and Soares). Three previously-hired Assistant Professors in this area have been promoted and tenured (Drs. Lee, Quinlan, and Simon). Laboratories in the Bioscience Research Building (BRB) have been established for five members of this group, together with a two-photon microscope, operated by Dr. Kanold, that images the activity of nerve cells in living animal brains. We have worked with faculty across campus to establish a Neuroscience minor for undergraduates. Our NIH training grant to fund the Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing was just refunded under the leadership of Dr. Popper for years 16-20. Comparative and Functional Genomics. We have hired two junior, one mid-career and one senior faculty member in the broad area of Comparative and Functional Genomics, with research

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foci in evolutionary genetics, evolutionary ecology, and gene networks (Drs. Castillo-Davis, Carleton, Machado and Kocher). We have tenured one Associate Professor in the field of Bioinformatics (Dr. Cummings), and one Assistant Professor in the field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Dr. Haag). We have built laboratories for four of these faculty members in the BRB. Dr. Kocher leads an international genome sequencing project, that of the fish, Tilipia, a major global food source. Many faculty members already established in the areas of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, and Neuroscience now take a genome-wide approach to their research. To support this and other new work, new robotic and real-time PCR equipment has been installed in the BRB. Ecological Sustainability. We have hired a mid-career ecologist to conduct research efforts on the effect of disease and global climate change on global amphibian populations, and to lead the Masters Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation (CONS; Dr. Lips). Detailed field studies and theoretical analyses by our existing faculty have informed and enabled the conservation of species in the face of threats to their habitats. The CONS program has established a new partnership with the Peace Corps to allow Peace Corps volunteers to combine their work abroad with study for a Master’s degree at UMD. Integrating the teaching of biological sciences with that of the physical sciences and mathematics. In order to implement proposals in the College Strategic Plan and in the national Research Council’s BIO2010 report, Biology faculty members have lead an HHMI- and NSF-funded team to introduce mathematical modules to our lower level BSCI courses, and have worked with the Mathematics and, more recently, the Physics Departments to overhaul their curricula for students majoring in the biological sciences. Increasing Faculty and Staff Diversity. Since 2004, we have hired three tenure-track and one tenured faculty members from underrepresented groups, and three women. We have hired three staff members from underrepresented groups. Improving Facilities. In order to house the rodent population required by our hires in sensory neuroscience, we have hired a second animal care technician and we have bought new equipment and implemented standard operating procedures. We have instituted a per diem animal care charge for research projects, and the College has secured State funds to modernize air handling and replace flooring in the facility. With these efforts, we continue to work with the campus and College to move toward AAALAC accredited facilities. 3. Research and Scholarship a. Vision Our research and teaching will be interdisciplinary, ranging from the study of molecules to that of populations and landscapes. We will consider the role played by a biological system’s evolution, development or environment in order to understand why it functions as it does today and to predict how it might respond to future challenges. We will take advantage of any plant, animal or microbial species that provides insights into a particular biological problem. We will study and model mechanisms for evolution, seeking to understand the roles played by genetics, behavior, development, and the environment. The diversity of research expertise housed within the Department of Biology will uniquely position us within the University to lead in the development of a range of research efforts that cut across disciplinary boundaries. Researchers within the Department will study the impact of climate change, natural disasters, and anthropogenic forces on populations, investigate the underlying causes of disorders that afflict

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the sensory nervous system, and outline processes that cause the death of cells and drive the emergence of new species. b. Overall research program [see Appendix II for detailed data] We have four research areas within the department:

• Evolutionary Biology and Ecology; • Neurobiology; • Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Evo-Devo); and • Biophysics.

The major funding sources for faculty research are NIH and NSF, which comprise approximately 63% and 19%, respectively, of current award dollars. This distribution of funds, however, does not reflect the relative distribution of grants, since NSF grants are often one-third of the dollar amount of NIH grants. External measures of quality Total research expenditures have increased from approximately $3.5 M to $6 M over the past decade. The Department’s total output of scientific papers over the past decade has increased from 61 to 81 refereed articles per year, with 2.6 scientific papers published per FTE faculty member last year. Of 89 research articles, chapters or books that were published in 2007, 16 were in high impact journals (impact factor >6), including Nature Genetics (1), Nature Neuroscience(1), Nature Structural Biology (1) Neuron (2), Developmental Cell (1), and Proceedings of the National Academic of Sciences (3). This number of high impact articles per year has increased significantly since the eight published in 2004. Analysis of the impact of or papers in various fields of research shows that we are not an omnibus Biology department that spans the breadth of biological sciences, such as that at UNC, Chapel Hill [see Appendix II for comparison table]. Rather, the overall impact of our papers is comparable to those over the same period from excellent “Integrative Biology” departments at UC, Berkeley and UT, Austin. These departments contribute to the total effort in the biological sciences at those universities by adopting an interdisciplinary approach. We differ in so far as our department emphasizes Neurobiology and Biophysics and de-emphasizes Plant Molecular Biology and Physiology – a result of our evolution from a Zoology Department. The Department numbers six AAAS Fellows amongst its faculty. Other recent awards to faculty are described in Appendix II. c. How current research programs fit into the five 2004 college initiatives Sensory neuroscience: Our research into sensory neuroscience constitutes a large fraction of the College’s efforts in that direction. Through hiring over the past decade, we have moved the focus of the program in three areas. First we have added investigation of olfaction to the group, complementing traditional strengths in vision and hearing. Secondly, we have emphasized the function of the central nervous system in processing sensory signals. Third, we have developed a reputation for work on the plasticity of the nervous system, ranging from studies of the evolution of sensory systems through to studies of the effects of sensory deprivation on adult mammals.

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Comparative and Functional Genomics: We have focused recent hiring in this area on those who apply genome-wide methodologies to areas that complement our existing research strengths in evolutionary biology, ecology, and Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Thus, Drs. Kocher and Carlton, who have established a cichlid fish breeding facility are leading international efforts to sequence the genomes of cichlids and related fishes as well as using the information obtained to investigate the evolution of sex, body morphology, and visual systems in relation to the fishes’ ecology and behavior. Faculty members who are contributing to international efforts to sequence and annotate the genomes of fruit fly species are using that information to investigate the mechanics of evolution of those species, and the gene networks that govern vision and respiration. Ecological Sustainability: We have continued to conduct long-term studies of populations, often utilizing quantitative genetic analysis, and Dr. Fagan has brought us a national reputation for the mathematical modeling of populations across the globe. Existing programs to monitor the effect of climate change on plant populations in mountain areas (Dr. Inouye), to conserve golden lion tamarin populations in Brazilian forests (Dr. Dietz), and to restore Maryland grasslands have flourished (Dr. Gill) and increased in reputation and impact. d. Research Strengths 1) We have a nationally-competitive profile as an Integrative Biology department. We

resemble excellent Integrative Biology departments at UT Austin and UC Berkeley. 2) We have strong links with neighboring federal institutions. Faculty members mentor

students who study at the Smithsonian Institution, the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge, USDA, and the NIH (particularly at the National Institute for Deafness and Communicative Disorders; NIDCD). Collaborative projects are frequent. Scientists from these institutions and others in the area are appointed as adjunct faculty in the Department.

3) Our postdoctoral population has grown. Together with graduate students, postdoctoral scientists are engines for productivity in any research department, and directly contribute to the department’s reputation through publications, and when they subsequently obtain faculty or professional positions. The current postdoctoral population mentored by Biology Department faculty has been recently estimated at 31. The postdoctoral population in 2004 was estimated at 22.

4) We have a growing interest in applied and translational research. Since we are a very diverse department, the definition of what constitutes applied or translational research varies from field to field. Some examples of translational work funded by external grant awards are detailed in the Appendix II

5) The appointment of a grants coordinator for the Department has greatly facilitated the identification of funding opportunities and the submission of proposals. The grants coordinator was instrumental in putting together a recent successful training grant renewal to NIDCD, and has established a culture in which grants are routinely reviewed by colleagues before being sent out.

6) We have new instrumentation for live brain imaging and for genomic research. e. Research Weaknesses 1) We lack mid-career faculty. The demographics of most of the research areas in the

Department is skewed towards junior and senior investigators. We have a deficit in faculty members who have well-established careers with a long future (i.e. those at the Associate/

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Full Professor interface). These individuals are the best source of research leadership for multi-investigator proposals and for leadership of campus programs.

2) We need to do more to promote the submission of multi-investigator grants, and second and third grants from investigators. The initial decision to file a grant is still largely made by faculty members in isolation.

3) Our research mentoring of faculty is too reliant upon a review system, wherein the activities of faculty are assessed at the end of every calendar year by more senior faculty, rather than upon continuous feedback by informed and involved peers. The result is long time lapses between a problem being encountered in the career of a faculty member, assessment of that problem by peers, intervention, and evaluation of whether any corrective recommendations were effective.

4) We have lost faculty to other institutions. Over the last five years, we have lost three research-active faculty to Cornell (2) and U. Penn. We successfully retained one faculty member who was offered a position at U. Penn.

5) Common use equipment, autoclaves, temperature-controlled rooms etc. in the Biology/Psychology Building are aged and subject to frequent breakdowns.

6) Although we have made progress in staffing and managing our animal care facility, it is still rudimentary and lacks adequate ventilation, humidity control, floor materials and cage-washing capability. We are a long way from AAALAC accreditation.

7) We do not have access to high throughput genotyping or sequencing capabilities on campus.

f. Research Opportunities 1) Faculty Retirements. Even without further growth in its total numbers, the Department will

soon have an opportunity to strengthen and broaden existing research areas because a number of senior faculty are reaching retirement age. This impending demographic turnover provides an opportunity to make hires that have the potential to change the research profile of the Department.

2) New funding opportunities increasingly favor approaches that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology. Faculty in Biology have played leadership roles in establishing an interdepartmental training program in behavior, ecology, evolution and systematics (the BEES graduate program), and in fostering research and training collaborations with scientists at the Smithsonian Institution (culminating in a University-wide MOU). Opportunities exist to expand these collaborations to create an environment for ecology and evolutionary biology that is unparalleled in the country. Population genetic (and soon, population genomic) data can now be combined with remote sensing information to predict ecological (short term) and evolutionary (long term) responses to climate change for almost any plant or animal. We have recently added several new faculty members (Castillo-Davis, Carleton, Kocher, and Machado) with expertise in evolutionary genetics and genomics who have particular strength in studying the genetic processes that lead to the formation and diversification of species. We have also recently hired an ecologist (Lips) who studies the effects of disease and climate change on species extinction. In addition, a large fraction of our faculty is involved in research that is strongly quantitative and makes extensive use of mathematical and computational approaches. In evolutionary and genomic biology, novel quantitative approaches are required to understand the mechanisms of evolution and the genetic basis of traits, including susceptibility to diseases which arise from variation in multiple genes. In ecology, quantification and modeling is required to predict the impact of large-scale forces such as climate change and disease pandemics on populations.

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3) We will expand our leadership in the field of Sensory Neuroscience. Sensory systems have been extensively studied as models for understanding how experience alters function (plasticity). But the study of sensory neural plasticity is also critical for finding therapies that can restore lost senses, recover the functionality of the nervous system after neurological disorders, and provide insights into external and internal influences that can permanently change the nervous system function. We have particular expertise now in investigations of the plasticity and development of sensory systems, spanning studies of the evolutionary development of eyes and jaws through to the changes in molecular structure that accompany re-wiring of the brain as a result of sensory experience. We have new expertise in optical methods for imaging neural activity at the cellular level within living, functioning brains. Our efforts in obtaining multi-investigator a program-project grants will benefit considerably if we further take further advantage of the cross-campus expertise in sensory neuroscience and the excellent graduate student and postdoctoral population provided by the Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences graduate program.

4) Evolutionary Developmental Biology is a growing, young discipline in which we have strength. As a result of hiring of new senior and junior faculty during the last decade, we are now on the cusp of developing a world-class group in Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Evo-Devo). The Evo-Devo group studies the molecular, genetic, and genomic mechanisms of evolutionary change in animals, including the biology of regeneration, eye development, sex behavior, and the origin of new species. Despite the very basic science that is done in this group, three laboratories now have NIH funding, the result of an understanding that Evo-Devo can provide a novel route to identifying new disease genes and understanding the biology of human disease.

5) Biophysics can be expanded by integrating biophysicists into departmental research clusters. The role of biophysics in the Department is to provide the intellectual basis for understanding biological processes at the molecular and mechanistic level by applying the principles of physics and chemistry. Ongoing research is focused on membrane channels and their role in programmed cell death (apoptosis) and in the transduction of environmental signals. The research on apoptosis investigates a fundamental mechanism that is a critical process in both development and neurodegenerative disease, areas of research interest to others in the Department and the College. In addition, new research by Dr. Sukharev on the mammalian mechanosensitive channel, TREK, compliments research interests in sensory neuroscience, particularly in audition, and in the central nervous system, where these channels are widely distributed.

g. Research threats

a) The possibility federal funding will return to its current, inadequate level after the current 2-year stimulus package is exhausted.

b) Anything that impairs interdisciplinary collaboration, inter-departmental research or graduate training, or the acquisition and availability of equipment shared across departments and colleges.

c) Poor laboratory animal care or security. h. Research Action Plan 1) We will develop new research emphases that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries

within Evolutionary Biology and Ecology. The Evolutionary Biology and Ecology group will hire faculty who bring complementary expertise and enthusiasm to collaborative projects, including large scale projects with national or global impact. In particular, we

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would benefit greatly from new hires whose expertise includes statistical, mathematical, and theoretical biology, including population-level analysis in ecology and genomics. This does not exclude experimentalists and field biologists, but requires new hires that have developed and utilized theoretical approaches to their discipline. These new hires would move our world class program in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology onto a larger stage and encourage submission of grants for research and education in Mathematical Biology. Fueled by these proposals and grants, we will establish workshops and mentoring in mathematical approaches to biology for researchers and graduate students. Administrative support for interdisciplinary training activities will be important for securing agency and foundation funding.

2) We will establish a research cluster in Evolutionary Genetics. Sequencing of the human genome has allowed rapid progress in the identification of the genes responsible for rare genetic diseases caused by single Mendelian factors. However, most human traits and common diseases are controlled by many genes and by the interaction of these genes with environmental factors. Evolutionary geneticists study these complex patterns of inheritance. They characterize the evolutionary origins of particular genetic variants and their distribution among populations. These studies can, therefore, provide insight into how organisms are likely to adapt to environmental change, such as global warming or emerging infectious diseases. Evolutionary Genetics is a traditional strength of the department and associated adjunct faculty. With the development of high-throughput genetic technologies Evolutionary Genetics is poised to make important contributions to understanding the relationship between genotype and phenotype, with implications ranging from conservation biology to medicine.

3) We will lead in building a campus Center in Sensory Neuroscience. Over the past five years we have broadened our departmental sensory biology group into one that investigates the plasticity of sensory systems, their evolution, their development and their ability to process information. From this platform, there is now the opportunity to establish within the Department and across campus a research initiative in sensory neuroscience that could bring together faculty working on such topics such as sensory receptors, the evolution of sensory systems, plasticity of the nervous system, signal processing, the remote-sensing of the environment, and neuromorphic engineering. Within one year: We will identify a leader for the initial stages of this initiative. The leader will work with faculty to define the intellectual breadth of the initiative, and bring together faculty who wish to join and are qualified through research expertise and external research funding. This group of faculty, once established, will review their current resources and establish a research cluster within BISI and the NACS graduate programs. The group will then determine how it will proceed to establish a campus-wide Center. In particular, the group will decide which areas within the group will require new faculty hires to elevate the group to the point where it is competitive for NIH multi-investigator grants. At the moment, mid-career hires can be envisaged in the plasticity of the CNS and the evolution and development of sensory systems. We are also interested in bringing in new faculty hires in biophysics into the group. Within two years: We will begin taking graduate students and postdoctoral researchers into the group by promoting the research initiative on the Web. We will establish taskforces within the membership immediately and will have written multi-investigator grants for instrumentation, administrative support, and training.

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Within five years: We will established visiting research fellowships, a high profile occasional lecture series associated with the group and an international reputation that is distinct from the overall reputation of the Neuroscience community on campus.

4) We will build our faculty in Evolutionary Developmental Biology, creating a research cluster capable of multi-investigator grant applications. Within one year: We will establish a research cluster under BISI for the study of Evolutionary Developmental Biology. This group will include members from outside the Department and College and will address the lack of mid-career faculty in the area of Evolutionary Developmental Biology. It will identify the number and research fields of any faculty hires required to reach a critical mass capable of successfully competing for multi-investigator external funding. Within two years: The growing research cluster will have submitted its first multi-investigator grants, for both instrumentation and personnel, and will have accepted students and postdoctoral researchers into the cluster. Within 5 years: The research cluster will have established an internationally-recognized and externally-funded research and training program in Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

5) We will hire biophysicists into developing research clusters Maintaining a biophysical approach is essential to the Department’s integration of disciplines. In keeping with our intention to foster quantitative approaches to biology throughout the Department, College and University, we will help integrate biophysicists into any new hiring plans in Sensory Neuroscience, and across the College.

6) We will increase the number of postdoctoral researchers in the Department, and improve mentorship. We will first separate our postdoctoral population into those who are with us for short-term training prior to moving onto faculty or research positions, and those who are making a career as advanced technical support personnel in a laboratory, or who have attained Research Scientist status. Within two years: For the former community of “postdoctoral fellows,” we will devise training, mentoring, and placement opportunities in research and teaching. As many as possible of these fellows will receive the support of new training grants within five years. We will set targets for increasing the number of postdoctoral fellows, the level of support from training grants, and for placement in academic and research jobs.

7) We will emphasize research mentoring in our peer review process. Grants will be reviewed by peers before submission and after the first round of agency review. The Grants Coordinator will meet with all junior faculty to review funding possibilities and the availability of grant workshops. Group discussions within research clusters on multi-investigator projects will be coordinated with extensive efforts initiated by the College to improve faculty mentoring.

8) We will continue to upgrade our animal facilities. Within two years: we will complete the installation of new air handling and floors. Within five years: we will enact changes to protocols, the operational/financial model, and facilities and personnel improvements required for the campus to be successful in attaining AAALAC accreditation.

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Research Action Plan Summary O= Opportunity; S=Strength; W = Weakness, numbered O1, O2 etc. as in text

Item Action Plan Specific goals S1. We have a nationally-competitive profile as an Integrative Biology Dept. with concentrations of faculty in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology, and Neurobiology O1. Faculty retirements O2. New funding opportunities favor interdisciplinary approaches O3. We will continue to build strength in Sensory Neuroscience O4. Evolutionary Developmental Biology is a growing, young discipline in which we have strength W1 We lack mid career faculty W2 We need to promote multi-investigator grants

A1. Develop new research emphases in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology A2.Build a research cluster in Evolutionary Genetics A3. We will lead in the creation of a campus Center in Sensory Neuroscience. A4. We will build our faculty in the area of Evolutionary Developmental Biology

1) Hire Faculty who bring complementary expertise and enthusiasm to large-scale collaborative projects.

2) Makes hires with expertise in statistical, mathematical and theoretical biology

1) Identify leaders for the creation of the clusters

2) Establish research clusters within BISI

3) Identify needed hires in these fields across campus.

4) Write multi-investigator NIH, NSF grants for instrumentation, admin support and training

5) Establish Center with campus-wide support.

O5. Biophysics can be expanded by integration into departmental research groups

A5. Hire Biophysicists into Developing Research Clusters

1) Identify research areas in the department which would benefit from a biophysical approach, including cell physiology, sensory neuroscience and developmental biology

S3 Our postdoctoral population is growing

A6. We will mentor our postdoctoral population

1) Identify postdoctoral researchers seeking career training and provide mentoring and placement training.

2) Increase postdoctoral training grant and NRSA applications

W3. Our research mentoring of faculty is too reliant upon a review system

A7. We will improve our peer mentoring process

1) Add a proactive research mentoring component to peer review for junior faculty.

W6. Inadequate Animal Facility

A8. We will continue to upgrade our animal care facilities

1) Install new air handling and floors 2) Continue to upgrade protocols and

business/operational model

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Graduate Education The College has recently established the Biological Sciences (BISI) Graduate program to replace many of the Programs that our students currently train under. This section therefore represents a summary of some of the current best practices, together with new approaches that we will introduce into BISI. a. Vision

Graduate students in the Department will receive a nationally-competitive, five-year, fully-funded training program with courses appropriate to the multidisciplinary nature of the Department’s research program. They will also receive instruction in scientific ethics, the methodology of teaching, and experience teaching laboratory or discussion sections within their discipline. Students will have regularly meetings with their advisory committees and will proceed to candidacy before the middle of their third year in the program. Before they graduate, students will be expected to have published articles in international peer-reviewed journals, and to have presented several times at national and international scientific meetings. Whenever appropriate, students will be encouraged to explore opportunities to study and experiment within neighboring federal institutions and universities. No matter what campus graduate program they belong to, all Ph.D. students advised by Biology faculty members will be treated consistently and will have equal access to Biology Department resources. Students will graduate with the credentials to enter directly into faculty positions or postdoctoral positions in leading research institutions, industries and agencies. b. Description of Graduate Education [see Appendix III for detailed data] The BISI Graduate program will encompass students with Biology advisors who are currently trained within three existing graduate programs:

• The Biology Graduate Program (departmental) • The Behavior, Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (BEES) Program (interdepartmental) • The Molecular and Cellular Biology Program (MOCB) (interdepartmental)

Two other graduate programs will continue to train our students after BISI is formed.

• The Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences Program (NACS) (interdepartmental) • The Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences Program (MEES) (inter-institutional)

We expect that Ph. D. students within all campus graduate programs will have equal access to departmental resources, including TA allocations, provided they are mentored by a Biology faculty member. Interdisciplinary training Graduate students in the Biology Program are currently able pursue highly interdisciplinary studies by combining courses from several graduate programs, as directed by their committee. The student and the advisor, in consultation with the student’s advisory committee, design a training program specifically to prepare the student for research in his/her chosen sub-area of biology. This program includes formal course work, seminar courses, directed readings, presentation of research and discussion at lab meetings, journal club experiences, teaching

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experiences, presentation of work at national and international meetings, research experiences in labs of collaborators, publication of research results, etc. The aim is to help each student to develop into an independent investigator. By working with faculty and courses across Concentration Areas within BISI, we will make interdisciplinary training available where appropriate to students in the new BISI program.

c. Measures of Graduate Program Quality Measures of the quality of students in the current Biology Graduate program are available in Appendix III. d. Strengths

1) The preliminary examination for the Biology program has the reputation of being a rigorous, oral examination covering a wide range of background material as well as a written research proposal.

2) An annual meeting of the faculty tracks students who have exceeded departmental timelines for completion of their degrees and votes on sanctions, including probation or dismissal from the program.

3) As they graduate, our students publish their work in good journals. We have started to track this as a Learning Outcome Assessment measure. The current expectation is that students earning a Ph.D. from Biology will publish the results of their research (at least “in press”) within one year of graduation. Productivity is measured in terms of number of publications and the impact factors of the journals in which they are published. The calculation is as follows: sum (publication*impact factor) /# of students in a graduating class. The goal for this calculation for the graduation classes over a 3-year period is currently 10. For the past academic year, the number was 12. We will set a new goal for the BISI program.

4) For the past three years, all Biology students have presented their work and socialized at an annual fall celebration. Students also present the results of their research at national and international meetings. In this way they receive visibility in their scientific community and expert feedback on their research. Our current goal is that, on the average, 40% of the post-prelim students will present their work at a national/international meeting each year.

5) The breadth of the Department means that students often interact strongly with those outside the Department and in neighboring institutions.

6) The Biology Graduate Office is staffed by a very experienced and dedicated staff member. 7) Students receive training in creative and effective teaching methods. 8) Particularly in the Evolutionary Biology and Ecology area, students are very active in

submitting and receiving predoctoral fellowships from federal agencies (NSF and NIH). Our Grants Coordinator and a faculty member (Dr. Quinlan) have facilitated this process and offered mentoring.

e) Weaknesses

1) BIOL Graduate courses have low enrollments. This contrasts with the higher-enrollment core courses in NACS and MOCB/CBMG.

2) The relatively small size of the program makes large scale initiatives for minority recruitment impossible. There are yearly efforts to reach out to minority students by recruiting, along with College efforts, at SACNAS, ABRCMS, graduate school preview day, etc. But for a small program like ours this is not cost-effective. Minority students are aggressively recruited when they reach out to apply to our program, and we are more successful in those instances.

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3) There is no Biology Program seminar series due to the time taken up by such an event in addition to the other programs’ seminar series and overlap with those series. This removes an opportunity to establish a sense of community within the Program.

4) The great majority of students in the Department study in the Ecol/Evol area – an area that receives lower external grant support per PI than others in the Department. Although students in this area are our the most successful in obtaining NSF predoctoral support and independent research grants, students in this area may be more vulnerable to downturns in TA allocations, and their time-to-degree may be raised due to the need to teach..

5) We have no graduate courses in developmental biology. 6) Stipends are, as always, inadequate. Many students are on 9-month appointments and

summer support is ad hoc. f. Opportunities

1) The College has established an umbrella Biological Sciences Graduate Program (BISI) that

will replace the Biology Graduate program and the other major graduate programs within the College. BISI offers the opportunity to correct many of the weakness noted above. Many Biology faculty members will fit into either the BEES or MOCB concentration areas in the new program. For others, Biology faculty members in the areas of Neuroscience and Biophysics are currently leading the formation of a new Concentration Area in Physiological Systems. However, it is not clear yet how the interdisciplinary nature of the Biology Program will be maintained within the BISI framework. A decision therefore will be made as to whether to establish a new concentration area in BISI to support students pursuing an integrative and multi-disciplinary approach to biology, or whether to work across the existing concentration areas.

2) Biology faculty will lead efforts to obtain training grants in Evolutionary Genetics, in Vision Research, in Ecology, and in Evo-Devo.

3) We will establish a core course in developmental biology within BISI. g. Threats 1) We must work hard to promote training in interdisciplinary and integrative biology across

the concentration areas and research clusters of the new BISI program. 2) Deterioration in personal security on campus makes it difficult for students to work late in

labs. 3) A downturn in TA support would make it particularly difficult for students in the Ecology

and Evolution area to support their studies, and may result in some faculty not being able to recruit students who have applied and pass our admissions review.

h. Action Plan 1) In establishing BISI, the Department will consider how to promote interdisciplinary

research and quantitative approaches across all of the proposed concentration areas. Within one year: this will consideration will: • Lead to the establishment of a new concentration area in Physiological Systems • Lead to graduate curricula that promote interdisciplinary studies across the

concentration areas of BISI. • Lead to new Learning Outcomes that reflect the experience of Biology faculty

members and their students in all of the current programs.

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2) Within one year: Biology faculty members will organize research clusters of faculty within BISI that showcase the Department’s research strengths.

3) Within one year: A special twice-a-semester departmental seminar series will be established to bring together students who work with Biology Department advisors, regardless of Program or Specialization area.

4) Within two years: Biology faculty members will teach graduate courses in all specialization areas of BISI that exemplify the Department’s approach to biological problem solving.

5) Within five years: The overall support for graduate students will have been reduced from 40% on TA to 30% on TA by utilizing training grants and individual investigator awards in order to minimize the exposure of students to downturns in state supported TA positions and to improve time to degree.

6) Within five years: Ph.D. completion within five years will be encouraged by dissertation and travel fellowships and by a lower priority for TA support after that time.

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Graduate Education Action Plan Summary

Undergraduate Education a. Overview and Strengths [see Appendix IV for detailed course lists and other data] Our College has a vigorous pre-medical training program. This program is diverse, producing more African- American biomedical graduates than any other non historically-black program in the U.S. The Biology Department’s Physiology and Neurobiology (PHNB) specialization is the largest specialization area in the Biological Sciences major. In addition to administering this specialization, Biology faculty members play a leading role in providing instruction to our pre-medical students in classes ranging from large core courses in cell biology to advanced courses of fewer than ten students. The Biology Department is also the campus center for the study of evolution and ecology, and we teach strongly-enrolled courses in ecology, evolution, conservation biology, behavior, and developmental biology. These courses serve students from disciplines as diverse as business, engineering, psychology, and philosophy who view our courses as an opportunity to develop an understanding of ecological and evolutionary principles. Faculty members in all research areas contribute to undergraduate teaching, and experience large class sizes. The average current course enrollment for our contributions to BSCI is 100 seats/faculty member/year, and has has increased over the past decade. A representative year of courses is shown in Appendix IV. We offer a large number of seats in laboratory classes for Biological Sciences majors, most of them in the fields of Neurobiology, Physiology, Cell, and Developmental Biology. We also offer a large number of seats to non-majors, largely taught by Lecturers. We derive substantial income from summer and winter, evening and online classes – approximately $150,000 per year. Undergraduate students are welcome in research laboratories across the Department and we fully participate in the College’s HHMI program, with some laboratories mentoring as many as 4-5

Item Action Plan Specific goals W1. Low attendance of BIOL courses W3. No Biology seminar series W5. No graduate courses in Developmental Biology

A1-A4. Consideration of Interdisciplinary Areas in BISI

1) Develop learning outcome goals for BISI appropriate for all research clusters in the department. 2) Organize research clusters within BISI 3) Institute twice-a-semester Biology Seminar series 4) Develop new curricular within BISI

W6. Inadequate stipends W4. Vulnerability to downturn in TA support

A5. Shift overall support for graduate students from 40% to 30% TA support

1) Write training grants, encourage investigators to include students on individual PI grants, encourage students to apply for grants and awards

W4. Vulnerability to downturn in TA support

A6. Encourage Graduation within five years

2) Encourage applications for dissertation and travel fellowships

3) Provide lower priority for TA support after five years

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undergraduates in any one year. We have an active departmental Honors program, requiring a research honors thesis examined by three faculty members, which has extremely good outcomes for students who participate. The Honors program currently has 25 student members.

b. Weaknesses 1. Although we teach approximately 1400 students/year in the principles of Ecology, Evolution

and Animal Behavior courses, the number of students who declare a specialization in Ecology and Evolution (ECEV) is very small – about 40. Many students enter and leave our 100-level courses with an interest in ecology and/or evolution, but either aren’t aware of the ECEV major or don’t see the major as a path to a viable career. A more substantial cohort of ECEV students would both enhance enrollments in the excellent courses we already teach, and allow us to increase the breadth of our ECEV undergraduate offerings. We have much to offer here, both the in quality of the ECEV instruction we can provide and in the connections we can facilitate with ECEV related undergraduate research opportunities. We need to seize the opportunity to recruit students with an ECEV interest).

2. The required courses in physics are not providing biologists the education in physics that they need and will have in areas that are most relevant to cellular processes. Despite discussions and good intentions, this problem persists. The recent approval of MATH130/131: Calculus for the Life Sciences will provide a springboard for incorporating more quantitative reason in upper level biology courses.

3. Our lecture classes are large. 4. Laboratory courses suffer from large section sizes (up to 24/section) and minimal equipment.

Some lack a cohesive structure in terms of how to combine structured experiments, discussion and student-led projects.

5. At the lower levels, we have not integrated quantitative reasoning and mathematical biology into our courses to the extent that we could. Upper level offerings in mathematical biology and biophysics have low enrollments.

6. Although we teach the majority of courses in the PHNB and ECEV specialization areas, we have not recently systematically engaged in systematic “vertical” planning of course syllabi to eliminate overlap between lower and upper level courses. This lack of attention to the integration of syllabi may have something to do with the split between “college run” lower level courses and “department run” upper level courses.

7. Too many of our courses, even at the 400-level are “survey courses” covering a large swathe of material in a lecture format, with little time for exploration and experimental detail.

8. Teaching loads are unevenly distributed across the faculty and are not-well correlated with research contributions.

9. We have no formal mentoring process for teaching. Annual peer reviews assess problems, solutions are proposed and mentors assigned as needed, but this is a reactive mechanism, rather than a proactive one; it can take a year to recognize and correct a problem.

10. There are only limited means to reward excellent teaching by faculty. c. Opportunities 1) We can use the expertise within the Department for some of the specialization areas within

BSCI to launch revitalizations of the syllabi across “vertical” swathes of the BSCI curriculum (e.g. Physiology from BSCI 105 – 400 level; Evolution from BSCI 106 – the 400 level, etc.) with a view to eliminating redundancies, and building deeper and more challenging curricular as students advance in a course sequence.

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2) A Biology faculty member (Dr. Fagan) holds an NSF grant to enhance the introduction of mathematics into BSCI courses. Dr. Carlton holds an NSF career award that includes the development of a new course in Sensory Biology with a strong physics component, and is working with colleagues to establish a curriculum in physics that is tailored to the needs of students in the biological sciences. We will take full advantage of the tools developed in this grant and pursue more NSF curriculum and individual career awards.

3) Biology faculty members are trying to coordinate new approaches to the teaching of physics and mathematics with those departments. We will collaborate in funding opportunities for these initiatives.

4) We will task teams of faculty and instructors with obtaining external funding for improving lecture and laboratory education from programs such as the NSF Interdisciplinary Training for Undergraduates in Biological and Mathematical Sciences, and the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program (which currently funds Dr. Fagan’s MathBench project).

5) Revenue from our summer/winter evening teaching programs can be used to seed grant applications for improving the classroom and laboratory experience for students.

6) We will take advantage of our research-active faculty in designing modern, novel laboratory exercises for undergraduate laboratories.

7) We will redistribute teaching loads more equitably, to more accurately reflect research contributions and hope to use the redistribution to offer additional sections to reduce the size of large lecture classes.

8) We will reevaluate departmental merit pay for truly innovative and excellent teaching. Rewards for same will be uniform across the College.

d. Action Plan 1) Curriculum revitalization:

Within two years: We will develop a statement of the intellectual elements a course taught by a Biology faculty member will include, derived from a mission statement for the Department. For instance, a course will include examples of multidisciplinary, quantitative and evolutionary approaches. Rather than revive the traditional role of the Departmental PCC Committee, controlling the overall topics covered by courses (currently set within the BSCI Program), the Departmental PCC Committee will be revived to guide faculty on how to include elements in a course that highlight the Department’s mission. Within two years: Using expertise within the Department, we will work with the College Undergraduate Program Committee to launch re-evaluations of syllabi across “vertical” swathes of the BSCI curriculum (e.g. Physiology from BSCI 105 – 400 level; Evolution from BSCI 106 – the 400 level etc.), with the aim of reducing redundancy and enhancing the rigor of upper level coursework, with particular emphasis on critical thinking, writing, and experimentation.

We will also develop a mission statement for ECEV teaching that focuses on the central role of ECEV classes across many majors and how the courses contribute to education in the biosciences. We will use this mission statement to revitalize the upper level ECEV curriculum and attract more students into it.

2) We will task teams of faculty and instructors with obtaining external funding. Within two years: We will generate one proposal per year for improving lecture and laboratory education from programs such as the NSF Interdisciplinary Training for Undergraduates in Biological and Mathematical Sciences and the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program (which currently funds Dr. Fagan’s MathBench project).

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3) We will work with our colleagues across campus to establish physics courses that have more input from biophysicists and more relevance to the biological sciences. Within four years: BSCI majors will be able to choose either these courses or traditional courses to fulfill their physics requirements.

4) Within four years: We will have introduced new sections to ensure that no upper level

course exceeds 60 students in size.

Undergraduate Education Action Plan Summary

Item Action Plan Specific goals W1. Low numbers in ECEV W5. Not enough integration of quantitative reasoning W6. No vertical planning W7. Too many survey courses S1. Using Departmental Research expertise

A1. Curriculum revitalization

1) Establish a statements of the intellectual elements that curses taught by Biology faculty will include

2) Launch re-evaluations of syllabi though vertical swathes of the curriculum in areas largely taught by Biology faculty

3) Develop mission statement for the ECEV Specialization Area and use it to revitalize the area and recruit students

W4. Minimal Equipment in Laboratory Courses S5. Availability of seed money to test new course concepts S6. Faculty Research Expertise

A2. Improve external funding

2) Establish teams of faculty and instructors to write grants for external agency and foundation grants - at least one new application per year

3) W2. Poor preparation in Physics S2. Current grants held by faculty for improving mathematical teaching in biology courses.

A3. Work across campus to improve Physics courses for BSCI undergraduates

4) Provide new courses and syllabi that students can choose to complete their physics requirements

W3. Classes are large A4. Reduce upper-level class size

5) Open up extra sections of popular courses and diversify offerings. Raise very small class sizes by recruiting more students into them with new syllabi and teaching practices

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Administrative infrastructure and academic support a. Strengths [see Appendix V for detailed data] 1) Our staff members are extremely dedicated and many have served in the Department for a

long time. 2) We have made gains in the diversity of our staff. 3) For the past several years we have had dedicated and experienced IT support at the

Departmental and College level. 4) We now have dedicated staff help for faculty with submitting grants and identifying funding

sources. 5) We have very knowledgeable staff in our business offices, and in our graduate and

undergraduate offices. 6) We currently have excellent staffing for our animal facilities. 7) We have successfully switched receiving to the BRB loading dock and provide staffing of

that area. b. Weaknesses 1) Our business office is currently understaffed and extremely overworked. We are behind in

accounting and currently struggle to maintain operations. 2) Although highly dedicated and experienced, our staff members work in an isolated fashion,

so that there is little back-up coverage if an individual is sick or leaves. 3) Our staff is distributed over several floors and offices. 4) There is no uniformity of staff structure in departments across the College.

c. Threats

Until we have finished retraining staff to overlap in their tasks and moved them to a single office, we are very vulnerable to the loss of a single staff member resulting in the complete cessation of a set of vital activities.

d. Action Plan 1. Within one year: We will move our business staff into a well-lit, larger space on the first

floor of the Biol-Psyc building, creating a much better environment for staff to work in, enhancing interaction, and improving administrative functionality by proximity to other departmental administrative offices; expanded space will improve the ability for faculty/students to interact with the business/grants staff.

2. Within two years: We will complete cross-training of staff to enhance flexibility in the tasks that they perform, so that they can overlap tasks and stand-in for one another.

3. Within five years: We will collaborate with other units in the College to establish uniform, parallel structures for administrative and technical staff that conform to best practices.

Engaging the Global Community: International Programs a. Overview and Strengths [see Appendix VI for detailed data] 1. Biology faculty members collaborate and publish regularly with colleagues across the

globe. Over the past two years alone, 17 faculty members co-authored refereed scientific papers with colleagues in 24 countries. In addition to countries with scientific communities having traditionally strength, these included co-authors from less-developed countries such as Mongolia, Tanzania and Cuba.

2. Faculty members have received honors from foreign institutions. Recent awards include: the CNRS Distinguished Alfred Fessard Lecturer (William Jeffery); the Humboldt Senior

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Research Award (Catherine Carr); Yonsei 100 Women Leaders (Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea; Hey-Kyoung Lee).

3. Faculty and students have established field research sites in many counties. Recent sites include those in Mexico, Brazil, Tanzania, Antarctica, Australia, Costa Rica, France, Panama, and New Guinea.

b. Weaknesses 1. International opportunities are initiated by individual faculty members in isolation, and are

not consistently reported. 2. We have no institution-to-institution connections. c. Action Plan 1. Within one year: Establish a central clearinghouse for information, advice and reporting of

international activities within the Department, in the Chair’s Office. 2. Within five years: Identify a sister department in another country and establish institutional

links to foster research, training and teaching opportunities. Partnerships, Outreach and Engagement a. Overview and strengths Partnerships led by Biology Faculty [see Appendix VI for detailed data]

a) Center for the Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (C-CEBH): Co-Director Dr. Arthur Popper: C-CEBH collaborates with researchers from, NIH-NIDCD, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research in Portland, OR.

b) Faculty who are members of the NACS Graduate Program Graduate program advise Ph. D. students under a Memorandum of Understanding signed with NIH-NIDCD as part of the NIH Graduate Partnerships Program.

c) Faculty who are members of the BEES Graduate Program (Director: Dr. Dudash) advise students at the Laboratory of Analytical Biology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, National Zoological Park Conservation & Research Center, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Laboratory of Genomic Diversity. A Memorandum of Understanding recently signed between the Smithsonian Institution and UM, formalizes these partnerships and provides joint funding thanks to the efforts of Dr. Mitter (ENTM) and Dr. Dudash.

d) The Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS; co-Directors Drs. Dietz and Inouye) is now a participant in the Peace Corps Master's International program. CONS students can complete an M.S. degree by receiving credit for concurrent service as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

e) Two Faculty members (Drs. Wilkinson and Forseth) have served as Program Directors at the National Science Foundation in recent years. One of our Senior Research Scientists (William Berry) serves as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Center for Technology and National Security Policy. Our College Park Professor, Dr. James F. Battey, Jr. is the Director of NIH-NIDCD.

f) Two Faculty members (Higgins and Forseth) teach within the College’s Masters of Life Sciences Program to train and accredit state teachers.

b. Weaknesses

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1. There are currently no coordinated efforts within Biology to enhance partnerships, outreach and engagement, or to recognize these activities.

2. As a Department we do not interact enough with neighboring minority-serving institutions.

c. Opportunities 1. The University’s location continues to provide opportunities for Biology to establish strong

collaborative partnerships with governmental and nongovernmental organizations that will enhance our research and education programs.

2. We have excellent institutions in the area that are potential sources for enhanced recruiting of qualified minority graduate students and postdocs.

d. Action plan 1. Within one year: Establish central documentation on our partnerships, outreach and

engagement activities. 2. Within one year: Develop Department-wide goals for partnership and outreach

development. 5. Within five years: Integrate our partnership and outreach efforts with our and teaching

research efforts so that faculty tine investments are optimized. Development a. Overview and Strengths 1) Through our teaching of undergraduates in the PHNB Specialization of the Biological

Sciences program, we have trained a large number of students who go onto successful medical careers. These constitute a large base for fundraising efforts.

2) We have maintained records of alumni of our Graduate Program, stretching back many years, which we have provided to the College for fundraising efforts and whom we invite when we offer a public lecture or for our annual Graduate Research Day.

3) Faculty members participate actively in College-led fundraisers and alumni gatherings. 4) Faculty members have participated in the University Commencement Planning Committee

and the Maryland Day Steering Committee. 5) We have maintained a modest scholarship donation-based program for graduate student

efforts - the Eugenie Clark Scholarship fund and currently, one of our faculty, Dr. William Higgins, is the standard-bearer for a College-led effort to attract funds for an endowed faculty position, and funds to improve our undergraduate physiology laboratories. With the help of college staff, the CONS program has also been able to attract modest annual funding for its work.

b. Weaknesses:

There are no coordinated efforts for enhancing external relations and communications - these activities are deferred to College staff.

c. Opportunities and Action plan: 1) We will continue to cultivate our connection, through current and former teaching faculty, to

a large community of health professionals who got their start in our classes. 2) We will exploit our reputation in field work and conservation biology to attract donors. 3) We will continue to encourage our faculty to coordinate with non-profit organizations who

fund work in health and environmental fields.

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Appendix I – Overview of the Department History The Department of Biology was established from to the Department of Zoology during a re-organization of the College of Life Sciences in 1997. During that reorganization, the Department of Botany was dissolved and Botany faculty members studying plant population biology were transferred to the new Department of Biology. At the same time, one geneticist chose to transfer from the Department of Biology to the newly established Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics. This reorganization established a Department of Biology that covered a broad range of subjects across the biological sciences. Prior to the reorganization, the Department of Zoology had been in existence since 1919. Between 1920 and the 1970s, the Department moved through periods with strengths in fisheries biology, parasitology, protozoology, and marine biology. Past faculty members included Eugenie Clark, internationally known for her field work on shark biology and behavior. The current emphases on neurobiology, evolutionary biology and ecology date to the growth of the Department and campus from 1961-1973, followed by steady hiring in the 1980s and 1990s during the chairmanships of Dr. Arthur Popper, a neurobiologist, and Dr. William Jeffery, an evolutionary developmental biologist. Faculty The number of tenure/tenure track faculty FTEs in the Department of Biology has risen by 10% over the past ten years, from 29 to 32. However, the headcount of the faculty has risen 38%, from 29 to 40. This difference reflects an increasing number of joint and affiliate appointments which have brought interdisciplinary talent into the Department.

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Teaching Programs Within the Biological Science (BSCI) undergraduate degree program, Biology faculty members teach large courses within the largest BSCI specialization Area – Physiology and Neurobiology (PHNB). We also teach large courses in Ecology, Evolution, Conservation Biology, Cell and Developmental Biology. Biology faculty members are leaders in introducing methods of mathematical analysis to the BSCI curriculum, as well as efforts to work across campus to design Mathematics and Physics curricula specifically targeted to students in the biological sciences. Eight of our faculty are assigned to advise approximately 500 students annually Biology faculty members advise over 80 graduate students. Approximately 35 of these students work within the interdisciplinary Biology graduate program, the rest within interdepartmental programs to which many Biology faculty members belong. Members of the Department of Biology faculty founded and still provide leadership to the Behavior, Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (BEES) graduate program, the Neurosciences and Cognitive Sciences (NACS) graduate program and the Masters program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS). The Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Sciences (MEES) graduate program is also currently led by a research faculty member of the Department. Departmental faculty members mentored 31 postdoctoral fellows last year, compared to 22 in 2004.

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Appendix II – Research

Faculty numbers in research areas, research expenditures, grant awards and sources

.

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Numbers of publications produced each year from the Department of Biology’s address

Measures of publication impact Last year the Department received 3,500 citations to its papers published between 2000 and 2008. In order to assess the quantity and impact of our papers compared to those of our peers, we examined all papers addressed from the Department of Biology UMD since 2000. This sample therefore includes the work of faculty, adjuncts, students and postdoctoral workers, as well as collaborative work. The data on citations of this sample therefore provide a measure of the summed impact of our effort from 2000-2008. We compared the citation impact of this work with that of some of our peer institutions. The distributed organization of the biological sciences amongst departments makes comparison with all of our peers impossible.

We chose to use the ISI “h-factor” as a measure of the overall impact of papers published from 2000-2009. An h-factor of 30 means that 30 papers have received more than 30 citations. Thus it is a metric that is increased by both the number of papers published and the citations that each paper receives, and so is a measure of the overall impact of a Department, not the impact of individual faculty efforts. The very best, specialized departments (usually with more faculty in a given specialty than our department has) have score h-indices in their subject areas of 40 or above (e.g. Genetics at N.C. State, Neuroscience at Brandeis, Evolution at Chicago). An alternative method of examining the impact of our papers, which is not dependent on the quantity of faculty or papers published in a given field, is the average number of citations/paper

Area Biology UMD

Integrative Biology UT

Austin

Integrative Biology UC

Berkeley h-factor h-factor h-factor Ecology OR Biodiversity 36 30 37 Genetics OR Evolution 34 36 37 Neuroscience 22 10 16 Biochemisty/Molecular Biology 20 25 24 "Genomics or Genome" Biology 19 22 24 Cell Biology 17 5 11 Biophysics 16 2 5 Behavioral Biology 16 14 11 Faculty Headcount 40 41 42

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for papers published since 2000, shown below. By this measure, the impact of the Biophysics group, for instance is much higher than by the h-factor analysis, indicating the quality of the output of this very small group. Comparison of the number of citations/paper since 2000 with those of the Integrative Biology Departments at Berkeley and Austin are, as with the h-factors, favorable. Note that the impact papers in Cell Biology, Biochemistry/Molecular Biology of our Department as well as the other integrative biology departments are well below those of the larger department at UNC. This is appropriate, since these are areas which are emphasized by other, specialized departments at UMD, Berkeley and Austin.

Biology UMD

Integrative Biology UT

Austin

Integrative Biology UC Berkeley

Cites/paper Cites/paper Cites/paper “Genome or Genomic” Biology 30 21 19

Ecology OR Biodiversity 23 13 16

Biophysics 22 6 13 Cell Biology 21 14 15 Genetics OR Evolution 19 17 16 Biochemistry/Molecular Biology 17 16 17

Behavioral Biology 16 8 7 Neuroscience 13 9 14 Physiology OR Endocrinology 12 10 10

Developmental Biology 12 14 13

Immunology 11 3 6 Marine/Freshwater Biology 7 4 7

In summary, analysis of the quantity and impact of our work in various areas indicates that we are comparable to “Integrative Biology” Departments at U.C. Berkeley and U.T. Austin. We differ from these departments in so far as, beyond Ecology and Evolution, we have strengths in the areas of Neurobiology and Biophysics.

Faculty Awards and Honors

The Department numbers six AAAS Fellows among its faculty. Recent research honors and awards to faculty members include: The Presidential Award, American Society of Naturalists (William Fagan); Guggenheim Fellowship (William Fagan); the Michael and Kate Bárány Award for Young Investigators, Biophysical Society of America (Sergei Sukharev); the CNRS Distinguished Alfred Fessard Lecturer (William Jeffery); the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award (Patrick Kanold; Daphne Soares; Eric Haag); the Humboldt Senior Research Award (Catherine Carr). The University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Faculty Award for Mentoring (David Inouye); Colwin Fellow, Marine Biological Laboratory

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(William Jeffery); Federal Highway Administration 2005 Environmental Excellence Award (Arthur Popper). Faculty members serve on the editorial boards of 28 publications and as editor of one publication.

Translational Research

In Neurobiology: • New strategies for treating the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (Dr. Lee). • New therapies for the treatment of amblyopia, weak vision in one eye (Dr. Quinlan). • New approaches to understanding the basis of cerebral palsy and schizophrenia (Dr. Kanold). • Investigation of noisy environments caused by human activity and their effect on marine

organisms (Dr. Popper). This has become a major environmental issue, and Dr. Popper is trying to establish the impact of these sounds and how to protect fish from that impact.

In Ecology: • Management of Populations on Department of Defense lands; Predictive modeling of fish

populations in rivers and models of extinction (Dr. Fagan). • Preservation of golden lion tamarins in Brazilian rainforests (Dr. Dietz). In Evolutionary Biology: • Mapping and sequencing of the tilapia genome – a farmed fish that is a major source of

protein worldwide (Dr. Kocher). In Computational Biology: • Development of new software for distributed GRID computing (Dr. Cummings). Research infrastructure The Department maintains basic scientific infrastructure (temperature controlled rooms, autoclaves, centrifuges, floor shakers and incubators, a film developer, gel documentation systems) for all of our research groups. The recent opening of the BRB has expanded the number of instruments available in these basic categories, as well as added more advanced instrumentation, including phosphorimagers, a two-photon microscope, quantitative PCR, and a colony-picking robot for DNA analysis. In addition, the Department contributes to the upkeep and purchasing of confocal microscopy, DNA sequencing and electron microscopy within the college’s facilities. Research activities in the Department are supported by a three member business office, a store clerk and a loading dock supervisor. Specialized support is provided by a Research Coordinator, who assists with pre-award grant activities, an IT Director and two animal care technicians. Research partnerships

a) Center for the Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (CEBH): Co-Director Dr. Arthur Popper: C-CEBH is made up of 12 core faculty from five different departments at the University. C-CEBH. C-CEBH includes many intramural faculty from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD of the NIH) many of whom are adjunct UM faculty and collaborate with C-CEBH investigators in research and student training. In addition C-CEBH collaborates with researchers from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research in Portland,

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Oregon. There are also international research and teaching collaborations in Germany, Denmark, China and several other countries.

b) Faculty who are members of the NACS Graduate Program Graduate program advise Ph. D. students under a Memorandum of Understanding signed with NIH-NIDCD as part of the NIH Graduate Partnerships Program.

c) Faculty who are members of the BEES Graduate Program (Director: Michele Dudash) advise students at the Laboratory of Analytical Biology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, National Zoological Park Conservation & Research Center and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Laboratory of Genomic Diversity. A Memorandum of Understanding will soon be signed between the Smithsonian Institutes and UM, to formalize these partnerships and provide joint funding thanks to the efforts of Dr. Charles Mitter (Dept. Entomology) and Dr. Dudash.

d) The Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS; co-Directors Dr. Dietz and Dr. Inouye) is now a participant in the Peace Corps Master's International program CONS students can complete an M.S. degree by receiving credit for concurrent service as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

e) Two Faculty members (Dr. Wilkinson and Dr. Forseth) have served as Program Directors at the National Science Foundation in recent years. One of our Senior Research Scientists (William Berry) serves as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Center for Technology and National Security Policy. Our College Park Profesor, Dr. James F. Battey Jr., is the Director of NIH-NIDCD.

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Appendix III- Graduate Programs Graduate Student Numbers and Diversity

The numbers of Ph.D. students advised by faculty members in Biology has fallen over the past decade from approximately 100 to 80, an average of 2.5 Ph.D. students per faculty FTE. This decline has largely been due to a decrease in the number of white males, especially U.S. males, within the program. Numbers of students from under-represented groups and foreign students have remained constant. The

result has been a smaller, more diverse body of students.

Measures of Quality

Students admitted to the Biology Graduate Program over the past five years have mean GPAs of 3.5, mean Verbal GRE scores of 565 and mean Quantitative GRE scores of 660.

Awards and Fellowships

Over the past two years we have recruited two UM Flagship Fellows and are attempting to recruit two more this year. Over the past two years, four students advised by Biology Faculty have received Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowships and two have received Graduate School Summer Fellowships.

Student Placement

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One measure of a Graduate Program’s quality is the institutions in which graduates find placements. Of the 233 students who received a Ph.D. from the Program since 1975, we know the positions held by 125 students. 59 of these are professors in universities, 16 are scientists in research institutes, 24 are administrators or lecturers, 10 are in industry, 2 went to medical school or are practicing physicians, 14 are recently graduated and thus are still in post-doctoral positions

The following is the list of institutions in which graduates were placed over the past three years.

University of Texas National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) University of Virginia NIH Yale University Weizmann Institute, Israel University of Pennsylvania Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Albert Einstein College of Medicine Prince George’s Community College Harvard University University of Virginia, Wise National Center for Computational Toxicology, EPA, Research Triangle, NC University of Alabama, Birmingham UC San Diego

Appendix IV-Undergraduate Programs Within the BSCI undergraduate degree program, Biology faculty teach core courses within the largest BSCI specialization Area – Physiology and Neurobiology (PHNB). We also teach strongly enrolled courses in Ecology, Evolution, Conservation Biology and Developmental Biology. Biology faculty members are leaders in introducing methods of mathematical analysis to the BSCI curriculum as well as efforts to work across campus to design mathematics and physics curricula specifically targeted to students in the Program. Faculty in all research areas contribute to teaching, as shown in the graph above. Faculty in every research area experience large class sizes. The average course attendance for our contributions to BSCI is 100 seats/faculty member/yr. The number of credits taught per year has increased over the past decade. Graphs of Seats taught and a reperesentative year of courses are shown below.

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Courses taught in one recent year

We offer a large number of seats in laboratory classes for Biology majors, most of them in the fields of Neurobiology, Cell and Developmental Biology. We also offer a large number of seats to non-majors, largely taught by Instructors and we derive substantial income from summer and winter, evening and online classes – approx $150,000 per year.

BSCI Ecol/Evol/Dev No. of seats 2008-2009 106 Princ. Biol II 834

207 Princ. Biol III 460 222 Genetics 126 228 Animal Comm 20

338B Marine Biol 28 338I Invert Biol 16 338U Vision 40 338L Dev Biol Lab 18 338C Genomics Sens

Syst 10

338Q Conserv Biol Lab 26 360 Princip. Animal

Behav 56

361 Princip. Ecology 72 362 Ecol Marsh Dune

Veg. 16

363 Cons/Ext 85 370 Princip Evol 128 394 Vert Form/Funct 30 430 Dev Biol 50 462 Popul Ecol 19 471 Mol Evol 16

Total seats: 2050 17 faculty

involved 16 ten/ten trk

BSCI PHNB No. of seats seats 2008-2009

105 Princ. Biol I 463 330 Cell Biol &

Physiol 488

338E Neuroethology 23 338N Diseases NS 28 338O Cell

Biol/Biophys 15

338P Pathophys 25 421 Cell Biol 105 426 Membrane

Biophys 14

433 Biol Cancer 97 434 Histology 19 440 Mamm Phys 286 441 Mamm Phys Lab 160 446 Neural Systems 35 447 Endocrin 50 451 Phys Chem for

Biol 9

453 Neurophysiology 181 454 Neuro Lab 90 474 Math Biol 6

Total seats: 2094 18 faculty

involved 15 ten/ten trk rktrk

Labseats Seats/yrCellBiol&Physiol 600

ConsBiol 40

DevBiolLab 20InvertBiol 8

CellBiol 80Histology 20

MammPhysLab 160

NeuroLab 90MathBiol 6

Total 1024

Classesfornon‐majors Seats/yr

HumPhysAnat 858

EnvironSci 187Chesapeake 55

HONR 60Total 1160

Summer/WinterCourses Seats/YrBSCI205 21BSCI206 10BSCI342 53BSCI375 9BSCI105 60BSCI106 60BSCI201 60BSCI202 60BSCI330 40BSCI443 30BSCI440 50BSCI447 50Total 503

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Our faculty have a distinguished track record in teaching and mentoring with recent awards including the Board of Regents’ Faculty Award for Graduate Mentoring, the State of Maryland Kirwan Award for Excellence in Teaching and Lilly Teaching Fellowships. Appendix V – Administrative Services and Staff Staff numbers:

Current Staff Assignments Director of Administrative Services Business Office and Loading Dock Staff (4) Undergraduate Program Assistant Biology Graduate Program Assistant BEES Graduate Program Assistant Front Office (2) Grants Co-ordinator IT Manager Animal Care Technicians (2) BSCI 106 Laboratory Manager Appendix VI – Global Partnerships and Outreach

1. Examples of substantive recent international research activities include the following accounts in this year’s FAR reports.

Dr. Avis Cohen: “We have been working with a colleague in Japan to develop an autonomous biped. We began and had considerable success (and recognition) with the development of his quadruped, Tekken, or "iron dog" in Japanese. This led to my being invited to serve on the Steering Committee of a grant for the development of a large consortium of research laboratories in Japan to study "Mobiligence" or learning through movement. This has entailed visiting and evaluating their progress every year from 2005-2009”

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Dr. James Dietz: “In 2008 I achieved two important career goals. I have spent 25 years working with Brazilian government and nongovernmental organizations to increase the size of Una Biological Reserve, the field site where I studied golden-headed lion tamarins. In 2008, by federal decree, the size of Una Reserve was increased from 7,000ha to 18,500ha plus a 23,00ha buffer around the area. Combined with the work that Leonardo Oliveira is doing for his dissertation, this increase in protected forest will effectively guarantee the long-term conservation of this species”

Dr. Charles Fenster: “I have taken on an advisory role to Chinese scientists interested in plant reproductive ecology and evolution. In 2004 I conducted a workshop and participated in another to encourage the development of the study of plant evolution in China. This advisory role now has taken formal status as I am now an adjunct research professor at Wuhan University and for the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I have published two papers with a Chinese affiliation and I am working on a two more at this moment (both submitted). I hosted a Chinese graduate student for three months, Xin-Sheng Chen, who helped conduct research with me in Puerto Rico December 2006-February 2007”.

Dr. Karen Carlton: “We recently published studies in Lake Victoria where the water is much more murky than the clear waters of Lake Malawi....... This work is also international in scope. The work on Victoria cichlids benefits from collaborations with Dr. Ole Seehausen, University of Berne, Switzerland. Visual collaborators include Dr. David Hunt and Dr. Jim Bowmaker, University College London [and] Dr. Justin Marshall, University of Queensland, Australia…….

2. Examples of Partnerships led by Biology Faculty:

a. Center for the Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (C-CEBH): Co-Director Dr. Arthur Popper: C-CEBH is made up of 12 core faculty from five different departments at the University. C-CEBH. C-CEBH includes many intramural faculty from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD of the NIH) many of whom are adjunct UM faculty and collaborate with C-CEBH investigators in research and student training. In addition C-CEBH collaborates with researchers from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research in Portland, Oregon. There are also international research and teaching collaborations in Germany, Denmark, China and several other countries. b. Faculty who are members of the NACS Graduate Program Graduate program advise Ph. D. students under a Memorandum of Understanding signed with NIH-NIDCD as part of the NIH Graduate Partnerships Program. c. Faculty who are members of the BEES Graduate Program (Director: Michele Dudash) advise students at the Laboratory of Analytical Biology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, National Zoological Park Conservation & Research Center and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Laboratory of Genomic Diversity. A Memorandum of Understanding will soon be signed between the Smithsonian Institutes and UM, to formalize these partnerships and provide joint funding thanks to the efforts of Dr. Charles Mitter (Dept. Entomology) and Dr. Dudash. d. The Program in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS; co-Directors Drs. Dietz and Inouye) is now a participant in the Peace Corps Master's International program CONS students can complete an M.S. degree by receiving credit for concurrent service as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

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e. Two Faculty members (Drs. Wilkinson and Forseth) have served as Program Directors at the National Science Foundation in recent years. One of our Senior Research Scientists (William Berry) serves as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Center for Technology and National Security Policy. Our College Park Scholar, Dr. James F. Battey Jr. is the Director of NIH-NIDCD. f. Two Faculty members (Drs. Higgins and Forseth) teach within the College’s Masters of Life Sciences Program to enhance and update the science content of secondary school teachers.