mccb winter 2011 · 2019. 9. 26. · program). two cosip groups were originally created in...

MCCB NEWSWinter 2011

In this Issue:

Fall 2011 MCCB Conference, Dr. Thomas Deits, ”Nanotechnology,” pgs. 2-‐3.

Peter Tascarelli, “Workshop in 3-‐D,” pg. 4.

Amy Stokes, “Fit Body, Fit Mind,” pg. 5.

Mike Brundage, Water Resources: Dilemmas in SW United States, pg. 6.

General MCCB News, pg. 7.

Spring 2012 MCCB Conference

It's shaping up to be a great conference with many choices of sessions, evening 8me for

socializing, some field trips and a special speaker on Saturday night.

Loca4on: Ralph C. MacMullan Conference Center at Higgins Lake near Roscommon, Michigan.

Date and Time: Mark your calendar for May 18-‐20, 2012 for an extended conference at scenic Higgins Lake. Conference runs from Friday, May 18th, 1:00 am

through Sunday, May 20th at noon.

Accommoda4ons: There will be room accommoda8ons on site in the Straits Lodge

that accommodates 40 people in 20 double rooms with adjoining bathrooms. Single

rooms are also available.

Plan on coming alone or bringing other teachers, family or friends to enjoy the area.

More detailed informa8on will be on the website later (visit www.mccb1.org)

Registra8on forms can be found in the Spring NewsleSer (March.) Lynnda is s4ll

looking for several volunteers to present. To round out the conference, some topics

could be more general, like a hobby you are interested in. How about someone who

does container gardening or nature arts and craTs for kids or an introduc8on to

microscopy for families or using natural materials in home decora8on or making your

yard a natural habitat or raw food/organic recipes? How about sharing what you are

excited about to others? Contact Lynnda Skidmore as soon as possible if you would like

to be a presenter or have any ideas or sugges8ons: [email protected].

http://www.mccb1.org/http://www.mccb1.org/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]

Highlights from the Fall 2011 MCCB Conference

BionanotechnologyThomas L. Deits, Ph.D.

h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/fei_company/5636849589/in/photostream

On Friday October 21st, Dr. Thomas Deits opened the fall conference at LCC with a deligh[ul and entertaining talk on Nano technology. Tom is former science chair of Lansing Community College and is oTen referred to as “Dr Nano.” He even has a lab coat with that moniker embroidered on it.

Dr. Nano’s enthusiasm is catching. He started by defining nanotechnology as products and processes at a nano scale and helped us get a bit of a sense of how small a scale that is. Biology and nano are a perfect fit since things grow on a nano scale! He gave us some of the history of nanotechnology and outlined the present and future uses of the technology. These included the self-‐cleaning fabrics and windows inspired by lotus leaves, DNA origami for computer chips and a nano cargo truck. He predicts there will be 1 million people working in nanotechnology by 2015. This was par8cularly interes8ng to me since my oldest son (a graduate of LCC’s chemistry technology program) currently works in nanotechnology in Lansing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fei_company/5636849589/in/photostreamhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/fei_company/5636849589/in/photostream

Tom entertained us with videos of such amazing things as myosin walking on an ac8n and a nano robot vehicle, and I especially liked the nano-‐tweezers. Interspersed in his slide show were preSy nanoscale photos. He claimed they were to keep us interested, a ploy he’d formerly used at department mee8ngs, but it really wasn’t necessary, we all were very interested throughout the en8re talk. I was interested to hear about the atomic force microscope, something I’d never heard of. (I know, get into the 21st century !!) He explained how it was like an old fashioned record player with a needle that was basically only 2 atoms across. So not only did Tom Deits keep us entertained for an hour, he got us all excited about the future of nanotechnology. A very interes8ng keynote for sure. -‐Lu Anne Clarke

Dr. Thomas Deits

Peter Tascarelli’s Creating Interactive 3-D Applications Presentation and Workshop

I wish more people had been able to s8ck around for the last session. Peter was so pa8ent and helpful in the 3-‐D lab. Four of us par8cipated and we had about 100 ques8ons for him. Our task was to build a 3-‐D table and put some fruit and other items on it. The program was called Maya. Basically the idea is to work with shapes and distort and move them to resemble something else. We were able to 8lt and turn our drawings in all dimensions – it was kind of like being on a roller coaster at 8mes!!! Anyway, with Peter’s help we were all able to come up with some kind of resemblance of a table. Making the legs was the most fun. Mine looked kind of like elephant legs, but not too bad. The others were able to come up with much more shapely legs. And being biologists, we ,of course, wanted to play with the fur, skin, and feathers op8ons in the program. Peter had to work hard to keep us on task. In the end we were able to print our “crea8ons” to take them home. I was delighted when a week later a student asked in an advising appointment if I knew of any crea8ve up and coming fields. She was quite excited when I told her about our 3D graphics program and I was excited to be able to talk about it

in a more knowledgeable first hand fashion than I could have the week prior. All in all it was a fun and useful hands on session.

-‐LuAnne Clarke

Peter Tascarelli

Amy Stokes – Fit Body and Fit Mind.

A fellow academic advisor suggested to me we invite Amy to speak at our conference aTer we heard her presenta8on at an advisor update mee8ng. So I invited Amy and was delighted she accepted. Any Stokes is Program Director in LCC’s Physical Fitness and Wellness Department. She became interested in the connec8ons between body fitness and the ability of the brain to solve problems, learn new things and overall func8on as

a clinical exercise physiologist and also from having young children. She started with a cute film and then presented her research. She cited the results found in large wealthy school districts like Naperville Illinois, but also in much poorer areas like Titusville, Pennsylvania. By decreasing the 8me on other subjects a liSle each day to increase the 8me for physical ac8vi8es the district was able to drama8cally increase standard test scores and decrease aggression. She also cited California, and Texas studies as well as more local SVSU. Amy has ins8tuted a popular class at LCC called Exercise for learning readiness. She also has fun and easy brain breaks on the LCC website and let us try a few of them out during her talk. And because of her presenta8on at the advising updates, LCC academic advisors are more likely to recommend students include a fitness class in their weekly schedule. The evidence is there, fit bodies help make fit minds!!!

-‐LuAnne Clarke

LuAnne Clarke and Amy Stokes

Water Resources: Dilemmas in SW United States

Mike Brundage teaches Environmental science, Anatomy and physiology at Lansing Community College. He lived in the SW US for 12 years and had the opportunity to work with Clark Co schools to develop a water program for K-‐16 schools.

Mike started by telling a story how he found out how alkaline Lake Mead is when he scolded someone for pouring acid into it aTer doing a demo for students. Mike was used to our more buffered, neutral pH lakes around here. He soon learned there are many more differences between Nevada and Michigan. He shared how Las Vegas gets most of its water from Lake Mead near Saddle Island and how they return the treated waste water through a man made river called the Las Vegas Wash. Doing this, allows LV to increase their allotment. This is necessary because most of the water is alloSed to Arizona and California. One of the issues is the wash doesn’t meander

much and so the water flows into the lake too fast. There isn’t much 8me to allow it to be filtered or flow through wetlands. They are aSemp8ng to slow it down with parts of old torn down casinos to act as small dams and are also plan8ng plants to decrease erosion. I found his aerial photos of the area interes8ng, especially how the landfill size increase so quickly as the city grew.

Another issue he shared is that Lake Mead levels are way down with calcium carbonate deposits all around it. Only 3% of Las Vegas’ electricity comes from the Hoover dam, the rest is coal generated. Like the water, California and Arizona get the bulk of the electricity as well. Phoenix actually stores water under the city and sells it back to Las Vegas!!! Los Angeles pumps water below Hoover dam and it flows all the way to LA uncovered. Obviously a lot of it will be lost to evapora8on. There is also fear of terrorists! He definitely made us feel lucky to live here in the Great Lakes Region!

-‐LuAnne Clarke

Mike Brundage

≈ Upcoming MCCB Conferences:

Spring 2012 (May 18, 19, & 20)

Mac Mullan Conference Center Fall 2012

(Oct. 26 & 27) Washtenaw Community College

Spring 2013: Date and place to be determined.

MCCB 2011/2012

President: David Shier [email protected]‐Elect: MaS Badtke [email protected]‐President: Cynthia Schauer [email protected]: Mario Lamber8 [email protected]: Lynnda Skidmore [email protected]/Membership: Susan Starr [email protected]: Susan Dentel [email protected]/Elec8ons: Leigh Kleinert [email protected]: Ralph Gorton [email protected]

Please visit our website at: hSp://www.mccb1.org/ You will find informa8on concerning conferences, job posi8ons, general informa8on about our organiza8on as well useful web resources on our website. If any MCCB member knows about biology posi8ons, upcoming relevant conferences, seminars, or workshops being held in Michigan (as well as throughout the U.S.) please email informa8on to: Ralph Gorton, MCCB Webmaster, [email protected] and/or to Susan Dentel, NewsleSer Editor, [email protected].

Other Conferences of Interest:

2012 NSTA Conference (National Science Teachers Association): (March 29-April 1) Indianpolis, IN

2012 Michigan Science Teacherʼs Association (March 9-10) Lansing, MI

2012 HAPS (Human Anatomy & Physiology Society) (May 26-31), Tulsa, OK

Vince Cavalieri

Vince presented, "The Great lakes Piping Plover, Management of a CriCcally Endangered Species."

Liz Graham, a post-‐doc in the Entomology Department from Michigan State University, shared her research on beetle communicaCon .

Please send out a wish for good thoughts and prayers for Sue Anderson (former member) and Cristel Marschall (member) from LCC who are both having some serious medical problems.

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S. Dentel, MCCB News Editor414 S. First St.Ann Arbor, MI 48103

MCCB NEWSLETTER Winter 2011

Mission of MCCB: MCCB (Michigan Community College Biologists) serves as a state-wide forum for sharing instructional techniques and new ideas for teaching college-level biology. The organization fosters communication, friendship, and unity among the biologists of the twenty-nine community colleges in the State of Michigan. Two state-wide meetings are held annually

Founded in the early 1980's, MCCB began as an offshoot of COSIP (the College Science Improvement Program). Two COSIP groups were originally created in Michigan: a southern group of colleges (associated with the University of Michigan/Dearborn and directed by Dr. Hertzler) and a northern group of colleges (associated with Central Michigan University and directed by Dr. Carl Scheel). The initial meeting to form a statewide organization of community colleges occurred at Delta College in 1981. The first slate of officers was elected at that time, with Eldon Enger as President and Janet Dettloff as Vice-President.

• To promote an interest in biology.

• To improve the teaching of biology by providing opportunities to share and discuss instructional techniques and teaching methods.

• To provide opportunities for updates on current topics and trends in biology.

• To facilitate the exchange of ideas and foster communication, friendship and unity among the community college biologists in Michigan.

mccb winter 2011 · 2019. 9. 26. · program). two cosip groups were originally created in...

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