Jane Maienschein

Director’s Note

Welcome to our newly designed Biology and Society website, for which we thank Felicity Snyder and ASU School of Life Sciences Visualization Laboratory. We invite feedback and suggestions.

We also invite you to join one of the first graduates of ASU’s Biology and Society BS Program, Melanie Hunter. She has issued a challenge to fellow alumni to step up and help support the Biology and Society Programs. She points out that it isn’t just how much you give but how many of us actually do give that matters. We all hate fund-raising, but we love the programs that benefit, so if you can afford to, please join in and help today’s students have the opportunities and help the Center improve.

Even in these economically challenging times, the Center a bustling focus of activity and creativity. While others may be bemoaning the sorry state of things, we are having great fun developing new projects and strengthening our commitment to excellence in research and education.

Our undergrads continue to come up with amazing projects and ideas, and they are engaged in leadership across the university and in the larger world in many inspiring ways.
What began as a tiny graduate program with Master’s students Tami Jackson (now a physician at Vanderbilt University), and then Esther Ellsworth (now pursuing a teaching career in Boulder Colorado) and Matthew Shindell (now a published poet and in a Ph.D. Program in History of Science at UCSD), now has a roster of outstanding Ph.D., M.S., and M.A. Students pursuing a rich diversity of exciting projects.
The faculty continues to grow, with philosophers Richard Creath, Brad Armendt, and Michael White becoming Center core faculty members, and others joining as affiliates and adjuncts.
What is especially impressive in recent years is that our core research projects have matured into funded, exciting collaborative teams of faculty, grad and undergrad students, and partners around the world.
In addition, our staff has grown beyond the indispensible Center Coordinator Felicity Snyder, with the addition of Kristin Bolfert (who is now in at the Scholls Podiatry School in Chicago) and now Jessica Ranney.

What was once a small undergraduate program that attracted the most wonderful students, along with a very small energetic faculty group, is now a fully developed Center. This gives us a great responsibility to continue to carry out our central mission of promoting research and education related to study of the life sciences and their interconnections with society. We remain committed to a drawing on the perspectives and skills of the liberal arts and sciences, promoting excellence in teaching, research, and engagement with the larger community.