‘Perspectives on Science’ series continues at PLNU

by katie callahan
staff writer

On Tuesday night, teachers from the San Diego area met for a monthly event hosted by PLNU called “Perspectives on Science.” Anca Segall, a professor and the chair of biology at San Diego State University, led the seminar with her presentation of “Site-Specific DNA Recombination in Nature, Biotechnology and Medicine.”
There were about 65 people who attended the seminar, and there are 100 subscribers this year for the Perspectives on Science program.
This program, originally developed in 1998, brings teachers from all over San Diego County into contact with leading researchers in Southern California.
According to the PLNU web page on the history of Perspectives on Science, “By the end of the 2011-12 program, Perspectives on Science will have brought more than 400 San Diego science educators together with 108 scientists representing 25 different Southern California academic institutions and biotech companies.”
Dr. Michael McConnell, a PLNU professor of biology, is in charge of these events. LeAnne Elizondo, the administrative assistant for the biology department, has helped organize this event for the past three years.
In choosing people for Perspectives on Science, McConnell said he looks at eight different areas of science and finds presenters who are good communicators and respected by peers in their fields. McConnell also said he was happy that approximately 25 percent of speakers over the years have been members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and include Nobel Prize winners such as Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner and Roger Tsien.
“The Perspectives on Science program was created for teachers who have a lifelong thirst for learning about science,” said McConnell via e-mail.
He said the four to six PLNU professors who go to these seminars enhance the courses they teach by learning about the latest research in their fields. McConnell also said Segall has given bacterial strains of plasmids to McConnell’s research lab several times in the past few years, contributing to his research at PLNU.
On the registration list for 2011-2012 Perspectives on Science events are Carly Boyd-Dovideo and Elizabeth Ferguson. Every current biology professor at PLNU has attended these events, including adjunct professors Dr. David Nichols, a physics professor, and Dr. David Lingner, a chemistry professor. According to McConnell, when Nobel Laureate Francis Crick made his presentation in 1999, Crill Performance Hall had standing room only and faculty members from nearly every department in the university attended.
He said students would benefit from their instructors’ knowledge of research.
“I would guess that students studying science at PLNU would be pleased to know that their instructors are using POS seminars to acquaint themselves with the latest findings in various research areas,” said McConnell. “It is always to a student’s advantage if the faculty member’s knowledge of the subject is more than ‘textbook-deep.’”
Dr. Dianne Anderson, the director of the master’s program in biology at PLNU, said the seminars have provided her with examples for her biology class on current research, as well as new jobs in various science fields.
“These seminars allow the teachers to be able to take back examples of how biology, chemistry, physics, etc. are being used to solve problems and to learn more about the world,” Anderson said. “These experiences also provide the teachers with knowledge about various jobs in science that they can tell their students about the next day in class.”
Anderson said that students are occasionally invited to these seminars if the topic fits with the biology class they are taking. She also said she enjoys seeing all the teachers who come to the event each month, primarily because there are some who are graduates from the master’s program in general biology.
Alicia Jones, a PLNU alumna (’09), works at Keiller Leadership Academy as a fifth-grade teacher. While at PLNU, she was a biology major. This was her second time attending the program, and she said the fact that she’s still learning can show kids the excitement of learning.
“I think it [Perspectives on Science] gets me excited for the field of science, and when I’m able to share that with my kids, it just breaks up the routine of learning every day,” Jones said. “I’m able to get excited about something and show my kids that I’m still learning, that I’m a lifelong learner and that school continues and learning continues.”
While McConnell said he thought this week’s speaker would have been “too esoteric” (obscure) for PLNU students, he said if a student paid close attention, he or she would realize basic research is essential for the public good and deserves financial support.
“Discoveries made by molecular biologists like Dr. Segall about how DNA recombination enzymes function are interesting to those researchers in their own right but may not, at first, seem important to Joe Q Public,” said McConnell. “In reality, though, it is just such discoveries by pure researchers who only want to better understand how things work that usually lead, down the road, to the development of brand new approaches for treating diseases or for solving other problems that are important to society.”  
Segall stressed the importance of basic research as a way to change human health.
“I guess one thing that’s very general is that you can start out with really basic science, studying a reaction that’s between a bacterial virus and a bacterial cell, and end up with a product that could really impact human health or … have a really practical human-related outcome,” Segall said.
According to Segall, the best teachers are the ones who are doing science themselves and encouraging students to appreciate the topic. She said her research showed her the importance of the discovery process for students to be qualified to go into science careers.
“I would say that the biggest thing to convey is to be open to discovery,” Segall said. “What turns people onto a topic and what makes it a lot easier to [learn what] you’re supposed to learn is seeing that discovery process, the wonder of figuring out something new, a puzzle, and that’s really cool.”