This is a really nice picture outside our cottage just after sunset. You’re looking west over Mill Pond towards Buzzard’s Bay and New Bedford. The cottage is across the street from the MBL Swope Conference Center. After Hurricane Bob in 1991, the entire street was flooded by the storm surge to a depth of perhaps 4 feet.

Most top research universities teach undergraduates. The teaching of undergraduates adds both an intellectual richness to the academy (teaching a subject matter from first principles forces one to think about one’s field in breadth and not simply in depth), but also provides an undeniable excitement as students ask questions that, while at first face naive, are also though provoking.

I am also of the opinion that neuroscience, as an undergraduate major, is the optimal way to commence neuroscience as a career. Let’s face it, given the overflow of data about the brain, the more years to cover it, the better.

Now one might question that: after all, isn’t there a danger in becoming a “jack-of-all-trades” and a master of none? I don’t think so, particularly when the enormous breadth of the field is taught at the undergraduate level. There is ample time, later, during the graduate years and in the post-doctoral training to specialize.

Finally, having a large cadre of undergraduates to teach provides a much needed first teaching opportunity for graduate students. And increasingly, academic jobs require evidence of teaching skills as well as demonstration of research ability.

Jim

In this blog entry, I’d like to link the vitality and health of the
existing neuroscience doctoral program (http://neuroscience.gmu.edu)
to the development of an undergraduate major in the same field.

Science doctoral programs, of course, are necessarily intertwined
with research activities. After all, the ultimate goal for a doctoral
student is to produce a dissertation based on research conducted
under the supervision of a thesis professor. Not surprisingly then,
the competitiveness of a doctoral program is then linked deeply to
the competitiveness of an institution’s corresponding research
program–this is as true for neuroscience as it is for more classical
fields such as physics or chemistry.

Thus, the health of a doctoral program depends, to a very large
degree, on the underlying health of the the program’s faculty
research activities. For those programs with a large, well-funded
cadre of internationally recognized researchers–even if in a
comparatively narrow area–that is where the best graduate students go.

Which brings me to back to the subject of undergraduate programs.
Ultimately, what is the major source of dollars that can used to
recruit top flight faculty? What is the backstop, that subserves the
promise of tenure? The answer of course is undergraduate tuition.
Those departments/programs that have a very solid base of
undergraduate students who are working towards a major in
neuroscience, are, as a result of that tuition support, able to
aggressively pursue and hire the best neuroscientists.

Hence the doctoral program and the research are ultimately dependent
upon a well-tended garden of undergraduate students all working
towards a bachelors of science degree in neuroscience.

Without such a garden, a doctoral program (and also a research unit)
is vulnerable to withering on the vine.

Jim

There has been some discussion about the possibility of creating a new
undergraduate major in neuroscience at Mason. The notion is for a
rigorous curriculum that emphasizes strength in mathematics, physics
and chemistry, while at the same time offering honors research
experiences, possibly in collaboration with laboratories at HHMI and/or
NIH. Ann Butler is currently chairing a committee of faculty to look
very carefully at this idea with the plan of eventually developing a
proposal for the new major.

In the next several blog entries, I’m going to attempt to make my own
case for why I think this is a good idea for the University and for
Krasnow. The aim is not to formally advocate for the new undergraduate
neuroscience major, but rather to open a window into my own
perspectives and thoughts on this issue with the hope that it will
inform future discussions.

I’m also writing these words, serving the last year of my three year
term, on the Society for Neuroscience’s Public Information Committee.
Over that term, I’ve developed an appreciation for the how the public
perceives neuroscience as a field and I think that perception is quite
important into how successful such a major might be, over the long
haul.

I should begin with a short discourse on my own Alma Matter, Amherst
College (www.amherst.edu). Amherst, a liberal arts college in western
Massachusetts created a neuroscience major quite early on, relative to
many other places. That program has been characterized by three
important threads: (1) rigorous quantitative background, (2) intense
student research experiences and (3) integration with a liberal arts
curricular tradition. Over the many summers, I’ve taken many
undergraduate students from Amherst’s neuroscience program into my own
laboratory at various places ranging from here at the Marine Biology
Laboratory in Woods Hole to NIH. All of those students demonstrated an
incredible knack for conducting sophisticated bench-top science and
more importantly for thinking about neuroscience in a critical
manner–something that is more consistent with an advanced graduate
student, rather than a college senior.

While my own years at Amherst pre-dated the establishment of the
neuroscience major (I majored in chemistry), these ideas of
quantitative background, research experiences and deep integration with
a liberal arts curriculum were all present and play an important role
in my own ideas of what such a major might look like at Mason.

Next time, I’ll talk about how such an undergraduate program might
complement our existing doctoral degree.

Jim

We all, at one time or another, find ourselves in collaborations with
colleagues (or teams of colleagues) at other institutions. Sometimes
this can get tricky, especially with regards to sensitive issues such
as authorship or access to data. Having been through a number of these
often very fruitful experiences myself, I have the following advice to
offer: make certain to get as much agreed to in advance (and preferably
on paper or by email) before you commence the collaboration. There is
absolutely nothing wrong with putting the question of, for example, who
will be the corresponding author right out on the table in your initial
discussions with the potential collaborator. While this is true even
within Mason, it’s even more important for collaborations outside the
university. That’s because, if things do go awry (and you can be
certain that they occasionally do), it’s very difficult for the
leadership of Mason to intervene in the internal affairs of another
institution on your behalf.

Have I made collaborations sound somewhat onerous? I hope not. In fact,
it is these type of collaborative research programs which build careers
and at the same time build our Institute. They are incredibly important
and useful.

So go forward and be fruitful!

Jim

Wonderful news for all of us at Krasnow. Kudos to Professor Ascoli and
his team!

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Giorgio
>
>
> Just got an email that the NIDA contract for the Neuroscience
> Infrastructure was officially awarded this morning to the
> SfN-sponsored consortium formed by Cornell/Yale/GMU/UCSD
> SuperComputing Center !
>
> As you know, our role is to provide a centralized inventory of
> neuromorphological reconstructions. As many as three elected SfN
> presidents (Bernice Grefstein, Huda Akil, and David van Essen) have
> already expressed their personal support and congratulations. We can
> expect a fair amount of pressure, visibility, and responsibility on
> our shoulders — this is a tremendous opportunity to claim a central
> spot on the fututre cyber-map of neuroscience. Let’s show them all
> what we are capable of!
>
> Giorgio

I received an update on the Krasnow Expansion Project this morning from
Ken DeJong. Things are moving along now quite well. Decisions have been
reached, however I’m going to have to defer on making those public. If
you chat with Ken (Krasnow’s Associate Director) you’ll learn the
latest.

On the new journal: Cognitive Neurodyanamics: it’s clear to me that
this new Springer publication may be an ideal venue for some of
Krasnow’s science. The new journal will get underway officially in
January, however if you have an idea for a manuscript, please don’t
hesitate to contact me right away.

Finally: I’ll be back for the long haul a week from today. I’m
extremely grateful to the support staff in both places (Krasnow and
MBL) for making Woods Hole possible this summer (and now Fall) and I
apologize to those who have been inconvenienced by my absence.
Hopefully some good things will have come out of it though.

Jim

So I’m up in Woods Hole this week to make some quite major decisions regarding my Journal, The Biological Bulletin. We’re in the process of chosing an on-line editorial management system, hiring a business consultant and looking at the copyright transfer issue as far as authors are considered. All of this because, as you are probably aware, the entire scientific journal business is in major flux. Business models are changing, author expectations are changing and even one hundred year old journals, like ours, have to adapt or go the way of the Do Do bird (to use an evolutionary metaphor in defiance of intelligent design).

At the same time, I’ve been named to the editorial board of a new Springer journal, Cognitive Neurodynamics, which I think might be an exciting place to publish for some of us at Krasnow. This journal will be open for business in January and I’ll have more details about the scientific focus in the next several weeks or so.

On a personal note, my sister, Dr. Jacqueline Olds, is coming through town this afternoon on her way to her vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard. She and her husband, Richard Schwartz, are on the Harvard Medical School clinical faculty in psychiatry. I don’t know how many of you read the report in the papers the last several days about a study that supposedly shows how ineffective anti-psychotic drugs have been–it should make for interesting conversation though around our dinner table!

Happy Weekend to all,
Jim

Reading the Wall St. Journal this morning (click on the link above) I noticed a very interesting article regarding the NIH. Apparently several influential congressmembers have gotten a bee in their bonnet about the possible “mis-use” of public funds by NIH-funded PI’s. This uptick in interest reflects a pattern that I’ve seen before–a political pendulum if you will–that doesn’t serve the NIH, nor science as a whole very well. Of particular concern is the focus on graduate student tuition support because one thing is very clear: graduate students need more, not less support from the federal government.

In general when NIH becomes a political football, it is a reflection, in my opinion, of general governmental dysfunction. The agency is clearly one example of a federal agency that actually works.

My two cents,
Jim

When one first arrives in Woods Hole, an ID card is waiting for you.
It’s very similar to our ID cards and the number on it is used to
register your computer on a local website (http://register.mbl.edu).
The website then enforces an immediate reboot of your machine during
which I believe it “reads” the MAC (hardware fingerprint of the
ethernet adapter, nothing to do with Apple computers) address of your
machine. From that point onward, your machine’s MAC address is linked
internally to your MBL id card and, as long as the id card is valid,
your machine will automatically be allowed onto the local network.

Interestingly for guests: even if you don’t have an MBL id, your
computer will be allowed web-based access to the internet–so that you
can read and send email via your institution’s web-mail interface.

Pretty nice system I think!

Now, on a completely different tack:

The suggestion was made, on the basis of yesterday’s extremely
successful seminars, that we stream web-cast our future talks. I am
very open to this possibility. The notion is that this would
simultaneously build the scientific reputation of Krasnow, while at the
same time, facilitating “virtual” attendance of our talks for those who
might find themselves deterred by the beltway.

Jim