Spring 2009

Dear Friends,

I start this letter on a somber note: David Bay, the “photographer-at-large” for EEB and its predecessor departments for 34 years, died on February 21 at the too, too early age of 60. David was known and loved by many faculty and students in biology for over 34 years and we miss him every day. He was one of the kindest, most generous people I know and could always make any of us laugh and feel the joy of life (as in the picture he took accompanying this article). We had a wonderful celebration of his life on February 28 at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Well over 100 people attended and his brother, Allen Bay, said it best for all of us: “we love the photographs, but we really love the photographer.” David’s wife, Susan Campbell, whom many of you may remember from her days as the business manager of the Biology Department in the 1980s, has established a fund in EEB in memory of David to support the photographic and graphic needs of our graduate students. For those of you who would like to contribute, details are on page 6*, along with more about David.

On a happier note, it always gives me great pleasure to talk about the accomplishments of our wonderful faculty, students, and staff. This year, Jianzhi (George) Zhang and Paul Dunlap were both promoted to full professor in EEB. And two faculty with “dry appointments” in EEB were tenured and promoted to associate professor: Noah Rosenberg of the Department of Human Genetics and Johannes Foufopoulos in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Our newest Collegiate Professor is George Kling, who has named his professorship after the distinguished limnologist Robert Wetzel. Dr. Wetzel was on our faculty in the 1990s and, sadly, died in 2005. John Vandermeer became our first Distinguished University Professor and will name his professorship after Asa Gray, one of the founders of North American botany, who was the first professor appointed to the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus in 1838. John also won the Imes and Moore Faculty Award for exceptional contributions toward recruiting and mentoring graduate students in the natural sciences who come from disadvantaged and non-traditional backgrounds. Trisha Wittkopp won the 2010 Russel Award, which is the highest honor given to junior faculty at U-M and rewards stellar scholarship combined with outstanding teaching. Phil Myers won a Provost’s Teaching Innovation Award for his work on the Animal Diversity Web (animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu) and Ryan Bebej won an outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. Our new Frontiers Master’s Program (see our last issue) won a Distinguished Diversity Leaders Award and Jim LeMoine, lab manager of Knute Nadelhoffer, won an Outstanding Research Mentor Award. Finally, Chris Psujek, currently student administration manager of the undergraduate Program in Biology, won the Kay Beattie Distinguished Staff Award—the most prestigious staff award in LSA. Many of you will remember Chris, who has worked with undergraduates in biology since 1983.

In research news, we decided to focus on research on carbon dioxide and climate change by EEB faculty in this issue of Natural Selections.* Besides the five faculty we had room to include in the cover article, many other faculty incorporate this most important topic into their research and teaching. For example, Mark Hunter and his students and our newest faculty member, Jeri Parrent, both look at different aspects of how increasing CO2 influences symbioses between plants and fungi. Chris Dick and his students examine changes in historical tropical tree distributions using molecular phylogeographic methods and use those results to predict future changes in distributions with climate change. Earl Werner and his students use long-term data on amphibian distributions at the ES George Reserve to relate population dynamics to climate. And (when I’m not being an administrator!), I work with an international group conducting experiments on climate change effects on alpine vegetation in Norway. Knute Nadelhoffer, whose Arctic research is included in the feature article, also studies temperate forests to understand how biological and physical processes interact to determine when forests are a sink for atmospheric carbon.

Finally, I want to thank you all for your continuing generosity to the department and let you know about a new opportunity (yes, I know, the Capital Campaign has ended, but our needs continue). President Coleman has established a new 1:2 match for contributions to international travel and learning by undergraduates. Because so many of our faculty conduct field research around the world, this is a tremendous chance to help our students get experience working with those faculty in places such as Peru, Cameroon, Madagascar, Mexico, Norway and many other exciting locations. EEB’s fund for undergraduate international travel is off to a great start thanks to an exceptionally generous gift from one of our 1961 graduates in zoology.

Have a wonderful summer and I look forward to hearing from you.

*Link to Spring 2009 Natural Selections, EEB's alumni newsletter