Hines, Mark: January 2012 Archives
Climate change and its impacts on the biosphere have been components of Dr. Juliette Rooney-Varga’s teaching and research programs since she joined UMass Lowell in 1998. However, during the last few years, Rooney-Varga’s perspective has changed, as the vast majority of scientific evidence points to an Earth system that is changing more rapidly than previously thought. It is now clear that we are already feeling the impacts of a changing climate and that those changes are likely to intensify unless society chooses a different path.
Many of us are
loathe to learn more about climate change because of “doom-and-gloom
fatigue” - how much can one worry about
a problem that is as vast and seemingly unstoppable as climate change? Rooney-Varga sees it differently. Climate change is a complex problem with many
inter-related causes. There is no
‘silver bullet’ solution, but rather many solutions that are also, frequently,
inter-related. Examples include
technologies such as solar and wind energy, algal biodiesel, locally grown
food, and getting exercise while commuting (burn calories, not carbon!). Solutions even include harvesting electricity
from naturally occurring anaerobic bacteria in soils using ‘microbial fuel
cells’ (MFCs), in which bacteria transfer electrons to an anode in an
electrical circuit, much the same way that we transfer electrons to oxygen
during respiration. In fact, recent UML grad,
Sara Dunaj, used molecular biology approaches to better understand the
microbial communities in MFCs in Rooney-Varga’s lab, in collaboration with
Biology Chair, Dr. Mark Hines and Dr. Joe Vallino (Marine Biological
Laboratory, Woods Hole MA).
With the help of a $615K
grant from NASA’s Global Climate Change Education program, a team lead by
Rooney-Varga and including UMass Lowell faculty Craig Slatin, Robert Gamache,
Mathew Barlow, and Mitchell Shuldman are bringing climate change science and solutions
to UMass Lowell students, high school students, our broader community, and an
international online audience. The
project “Climate Change Education:
Science, Solutions, and Education in an Age of Media” is integrating
climate change science with video production by students to create a unique and
stimulating approach to global climate change education. Rooney-Varga is also the Director of UML’s
Climate Change Initiative, which reaches across the campus and is already
changing our local and worldview.
“Principles
of Biology,” our Freshman major’s course, is evolving, but it has nothing to do
with survival of the fittest! At the helm is Naomi Wernick, one of our
newest faculty, who’s goal doesn’t stop with to leaving no student behind, but
rather to “intelligently design” the course to maximize learning for all
students.
Naomi was an
Adjunct Assistant Professor at Bentley University for 4 years before coming to
UMass. Unlike most of us who live in (at least) two worlds – teaching and
research, which compete for our attention, her teaching methods and goals are
actually the heart of her research! She has conducted research concerning
the positioning of genomics in biology education, and is a founding member of
the KBM Journal of Science Education.
Dr. Naomi Wernick 