Faculty News

2009-10 Faculty Member of the Year Award Recipient: Lawrence Gramling

Dr. Lawrence Gramling, Ph.D, C.P.A. is the assistant head of the accounting department in the School of Business. He has actively participated as a faculty member in the Honors Program for many years. He served on the Board of Associate Honors Directors since 1988. In 1995, he spent eight months as the interim director of the Honors Program.

Dr. Gramling has been the accounting department’s Honors advisor for more than 20 years and recently developed a pre-thesis seminar series of workshops for Accounting majors. He also has taught an Honors section of the Principles of Managerial Accounting course and has directed numerous honors theses for Accounting Honors graduates over the years. Continue reading

2009-10 Faculty Member of the Year Award: Robert Thorson

Dr. Robert Thorson earned his B.S. from Bemidji State College, his M.S. from the University of Alaska, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He is a professor of geology in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Anthropology, specializing in integrated geoscience, kettle lakes, and stone walls. He has been heavily involved with the Honors Program since the Spring of 2001, when he was a candidate for the Directorship of the Honors Program. That fall, he created an elective science course for Honors students, Current Issues in Environmental Science, one that is still being taught today. In 2004, he became fully invested with developing and teaching a new breed of interdisciplinary honors courses, creating Geoscience Through American Studies, the first course for what would later become the Honors Core curriculum. Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: On-Line Certified Professional Food Manager Course

Summer 2009: The Evaluation of an On-line Certified Professional Food Manager Course to Reduce/Eliminate Food Born Illnesses in the Food Service Industry

By Wenhui Sun, Ellen Shanley M.B.A., R.D. and Colleen Thompson M.S., R.D., The University of Connecticut, Storrs, Conn.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 76 million people suffer from foodborne illnesses each year in the United States. Food service is the second largest employer in the United States with a large number of immigrants and individuals having limited skills. The food service industry has an extremely high turnover. Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: Soldier Systems Center

Summer 2009: Biological Science Aid, Military Performance Division, U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick Soldier Systems Center

By James Alvarez, POC: Edward J. Zambraski, Ph.D., Jeffery S. Staab, M.S.

My summer was spent as an Intern with the United States Army in Natick, MA, at the Soldier Systems Center. My division’s mission is stated as “conducting biomedical research to improve and sustain Warfighter health and performance under all conditions”. My role in this mission was acting as a general lab technician, processing human blood and tissue samples collected from numerous ongoing studies. I also had the opportunity to observe, and in some cases implement, a number of experimental protocols. Continue reading

2008-09 Faculty Member of the Year Award: Robert Gross

Dr. Robert A. Gross is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, he received his B.A. in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 (Phi Beta Kappa 1965) and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in 1976. He taught at Amherst College, the University of Sussex, and the College of William and Mary (where he served as director of American Studies) before coming to the University of Connecticut in 2003. He is the recipient of various national awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim, Howard, and Rockefeller Foundations, the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: Mesenchymal Progenitors

Spring 2008: Characterization of Mesenchymal Progenitors from Bone Marrow and Adipose Tissue

By Shawnet K. Jones, Katie Lamothe, Ivo Kalajzic and H.Leonardo Aguila

In the lab of Dr. H. Leonardo Aguila we aimed to find markers that would allow for the characterization and isolation of mesenchymal progenitors from different sources. This project focused mostly on progenitors isolated from bone marrow and adipose tissue, two sites containing cells with recognized ability to form bone. In addition this project aimed to determine if there was a differential distribution of progenitor cells amongst males and females. Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: Chemotherapeutic drug (SAM)

Summer 2008: Studying the Effects of a Potential New Chemotherapeutic Agent, SAM, on a Breast Cancer Cell Line and on a Yeast Model for Cancer

By Luke Monteagudo

During my summer fellowship, I worked four days a week doing basic science research on the effect of a potential new chemotherapeutic drug, SAM, on a breast cancer cell line and on a yeast model for cancer. Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: Acoustic Cues for Sound Localization

Summer 2008: Identification of Candidate Acoustic Cues for Sound Localization

By Rishi Kothari

Sound localization is an important ability for all animals for a variety of reasons, including avoiding predation and finding food. The localization of sound in animals, as well as humans, has been investigated extensively with respect to varying azimuth, but substantially less study has been done on the effects of changing the distance or elevation of the sound source. Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: Osteoblast Cell Culture

Summer 2008: Optimizing Osteoblast Cell Culture for the Study of Dlx Gene Function

By Sean Ghassem-Zadeh

With the high volume of research involving in vitro studies and the need to optimize specific types of cell cultures, multiple companies have produced various Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) products that can aid cell culture processes. With numerous companies producing multiple lots of FBS, which are obtained from an isolated population of fetal calves, a further investigation is needed to determine the best product for a desired cell culture (in this case calvaria and bone marrow cultures). Continue reading

Rowe Researcher: Autoimmune Uveitis

Philip Gorecki conducting research.
Philip Gorecki conducting research.

Summer 2008: Autoimmunity to Interphotoreceptor Retinoid Binding Protein

By Philip J. Gorecki, Robert E. Cone, Ph.D., and Rajwardhan Yadav, M.D./Ph.D. Dept. of Immunology & Connecticut Lions’ Vascular Vision Center University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Conn.

Autoimmune uveitis is a condition in which the immune response is directed against retinal antigens. Interphotoreceptor retinoid binding protein (IRBP) is an immunodominant antigen that stimulates T and B lymphocytes. Our aim was to characterize IRBP specific immune responses using a mouse model. Continue reading