MSU senior Susan Sonnenschein was named a grand prize award winner for her neuroscience research during the annual University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum.

A neuroscience undergraduate was one of two Michigan State University (MSU) seniors named grand prize winners of the 2013 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF).

Susan Sonnenschein, an Honors College student double majoring in neuroscience and psychology, won the grand prize in the arts, humanities, social science division.

Sonnenschein’s research revealed the brain adds new cells during puberty to help adolescents transition to adulthood. The physical, cognitive, emotional and social changes that occur during maturation are reflected in the brain, she said.

“This study looked at whether sex difference in cell proliferation during puberty underlies the ultimate difference in cell number,”Sonnenschein explained. “The data supports the hypothesis that new cells are added to the PFC during puberty and there appears to be a difference in the number of cells that are added and maintained in males and females.”

Ari Walter, a human biology major in Lyman Briggs College, won the grand prize in the science, technology, engineering and math division. Walter looked at DNA variants that significantly increase the risk for cleft lip and palate. He found abnormal skin and craniofacial development among rats with mutated or missing genes.

About 545 students from 14 colleges presented nearly 400 projects at the forum. First place awards were given in each of the 18 categories, but only two grand prizes were awarded. UURAF, held annually, provides students with an opportunity to showcase their scholarship and creative activity while bolstering their presentation skills.

For a complete list of 2013 UURAF award winners, visit http://urca.msu.edu/files/uuraf/awards/uuraf-awards_2013.pdf.

Thomas Burton

Thomas M. Burton, professor emeritus of zoology and fisheries & wildlife at Michigan State University (MSU) and a pioneer in the bioassessment of the Great Lakes wetlands, passed away on June 1. He was 72.

Burton was born on November 24, 1941. He attended the University of Louisiana-Monroe, where he received a B.S. and an M.S. in biology in 1963 and 1965, respectively, and a Ph.D. in aquatic ecology from Cornell University in 1973. He completed his post-doctoral work in biogeochemistry at Florida State University in 1974.

Burton was a faculty member with the Department of Zoology for more than 32 years, from 1975-2007. He began his career at MSU with a tenure track research position in the Institute of Water Research. He conducted research on the Water Quality Management Project, and became the lead researcher on a pilot watershed study funded by the International Joint Commission through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He also served as chairperson of the Department of Zoology and as director of the Biological Science Program from 1996-2000.

Burton’s research focused on community dynamics of streams, wetlands and lakes, and the monitoring and restoration of the Great Lakes coastal marshes, inland forested wetlands and streams. He published more than 130 papers on salamander and fish ecology, the use of natural systems for recycling wastewater, effects of stormwater runoff on lakes and streams, and plant and animal community dynamics in streams and wetlands.

He was awarded research funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Interior, the Michigan Departments of Environmental Quality and Natural Resources, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, The Nature Conservancy and Dow Chemical Company. Career awards included a Smithsonian Fellowship for research on the streams in Panama (1989-90), an Indo-American Fellowship for research on the streams in the Nilgiri Hills in Bangalore, India (1989-90) and a Fulbright Fellowship.

Burton’s advice was sought by federal and state agencies and by non-governmental organizations. He was selected as a spokesperson for the wetlands environmental indicators group and presented the Canadian-U.S. Report at the 2000 State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference. He also presented numerous keynote addresses at international conferences, including the Wetlands 2000 Conference in Quebec City, the Michigan-Shiga Large Lakes Conference in Japan in 2001, and scientific sessions on wetlands and streams in Ireland and New Zealand for the International Limnological Society.

He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Wetlands Society and the International Society for Tropical Ecology. Additionally, he served as chairperson of the Great Lakes Commission Wetland Consortium and co-chair of the science committee and was responsible for writing the science report on bioassessment indicators for Great Lakes wetlands.

Burton was an exceptional researcher and teacher, highly recognized by his peers in the aquatic sciences and deeply appreciated by his students. He enjoyed and cherished his career, his friends and students, his years at MSU, and the natural world that he studied, advocated for and immersed himself in.

He is survived by his wife, Delorus, and sons Richard and David.

Marcos Dantus

Marcos Dantus, a professor in the Michigan State University (MSU) Department of Chemistry and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy, received the 2013 Innovator of the Year award from MSU’s Innovation Center at a ceremony yesterday for his work with ultrashort pulsed lasers (lasers that emit light pulses with a duration measured in millionths-of-a-billionth of a second, or femtoseconds). The award recognizes a researcher who has been actively involved in intellectual property creation and technology transfer activities at MSU.

“It is an honor to receive this recognition,” Dantus said. “I would also like to acknowledge the work of students and postdocs that helped to develop the technology from the first ‘aha!’ moment.”

Robert Maleczka, professor and chair of the MSU Department of Chemistry, applauded Dantus’ “can do” spirit.

“Marcos is a chemist who really follows the MSU land-grant tradition in that his pursuit of basic science is always coupled with thoughts of how what he learns can enable and benefit others,” he said. “Moreover, be it teaching freshman chemistry or involving undergraduate researchers in his lab, Marcos holds up the MSU tradition of providing our students the opportunity to learn from our top researchers.”

Dantus used his fundamental research with ultrashort pulsed lasers to develop a system for automated measurement and compression of laser pulses, making them more attractive for commercial use. The approach, known by the name MIIPS (multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan), was so different than anything that had been done before that it took two years to get the first manuscript about the research published, but perseverance and hard work has paid off in multiple ways.

“The reason why the ultrashort pulse duration is significant is because, with moderate power—for example, the same as a laser pointer—these lasers’ pulses can reach peak intensities of tens of terawatts at the focus of the laser beam,” Dantus explained. “That intensity is sufficient to evaporate any material. This makes it possible to cut diamonds and metals and even slice the cornea in the eye for refractive surgery without any thermal damage.”

To get an idea of how short the femtosecond timescale is, consider that it takes light about 1.3 seconds to travel from the moon to earth, and it takes light about 500 fs to travel the width of a human hair.

To date, most of the ultrashort pulsed lasers are in research laboratories and not in industry and hospitals because they require expert adjustment, which is time consuming and expensive.

Dantus’ invention has already enabled enhanced biomedical imaging for the detection of cancer, standoff detection of explosives, and enhanced proteomic analysis. It is also being used to improve future ultrashort pulsed fiber lasers. MIIPS has been the foundation for Laser Focus World innovation awards in 2009 and 2012 and four “Best in Optics” awards from Optics and Photonics News that picks the most significant optics manuscripts for the year.

The MIIPS technology has been patented and is now being commercialized by Biophotonic Solutions Inc., a Michigan corporation that Dantus founded. The first step in commercialization was to sell MIIPS systems to research laboratories. There are presently more than 100 MIIPS systems in the most advanced laser laboratories in 14 different countries. These include Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, and the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force research laboratories.

“The next step is to embed the MIIPS technology in medical and industrial lasers, enhancing their performance and reliability while reducing their cost,” Dantus said.

The technology will result in overall savings because it allows companies to mass produce femtosecond lasers. Already a number of public companies have expressed interest in having lasers that automatically optimize their output for different tasks using MIIPS.

“It isn’t often that an inventor makes a fundamental discovery with the potential to change numerous fields,” said Monte Falcoff, an MSU alumnus and partner in Harness Dickey, a Detroit law firm that specializes in patents. Falcoff filed and prosecuted all of Dantus’ patents on the project. “Pioneering inventions are few and far between, however, Marcos has conceived of many.”

Twelve U.S. patents have been issued to Dantus with many more still pending.

The research leading to the invention of MIIPS and its applications has been funded by numerous agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Dantus also has involved large numbers of undergraduates, graduates and post-doctoral researchers, as well as some high-school students in the research.

The MSU Innovation Center brings pathbreaking research discoveries by MSU faculty, staff and students to the marketplace and to individuals and communities in Michigan and around the world. It creates synergy among three critical areas necessary for improving the impact of MSU outcomes: attracting private support for research initiatives, promoting and protecting intellectual property, and transitioning MSU ideas and inventions into sustainable new businesses.

This picture is of a single swarm that evolved in the model due to predation (see red dot on left) in the presence of the predator confusion effect. Click on image to enlarge.

Many animals – from locusts to fish – live in groups and swarm, but scientists aren’t sure why or how this behavior evolved. Now a multidisciplinary team of Michigan State University scientists has used a model system to show for the first time that predator confusion can make prey evolve swarming behavior.

Swarming allows groups of animals to accomplish tasks that they can’t do alone, such as defending themselves from a much larger predator.

“There are both costs and benefits to swarming and all other behaviors,” said Christoph Adami, MSU professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. “The benefits are discussed all the time. But the litmus test is whether a behavior evolves because of those benefits. If it doesn’t evolve, it doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial, but if it does evolve, it’s proof that the behavior has benefits that outweigh its costs. Our model system shows that predator confusion was enough of a selection pressure to evolve swarming behavior in prey.”

The paper “Predator confusion is sufficient to evolve swarming behavior,” is published online today by the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

“In our computational model system, swarming evolved as a defense to exploit the predator confusion effect,” said Randal Olson, computer science graduate student and lead author of the paper. “Rather than seeing just one or two prey when the predators attack, which is what happens when prey scatter, swarming makes the predators see many prey, which confuses them and allows more prey to survive.”

The researchers used a computer model system where the predators and the prey continuously interacted. The system selected prey and predators that evolved survival-enhancing behaviors – either eating prey (the predators) or avoiding being eaten (the prey). Each experiment was replicated more than 100 times to make sure that the behavior evolved due to predator confusion and not just by chance.

Studying the evolution of swarming is extremely difficult to do in a real-world setting. Generations of animals can’t be reanimated, despite what Jurassic Park would have one believe. In real-world swarms, it’s also very difficult to examine each of the elements that may affect swarming (such as predator confusion) in isolation, to see if they affect the behavior’s evolution. So the researchers used their simplified model to look at just one aspect: the fact that predators become confused if they see too many prey.

“Chance does play a huge role in evolution,” Adami said. “But if we repeat something 1,000 times, we start to see patterns and can talk about averages. Evolution is a sequence of events influenced by chance.”

Studying swarming and unlocking the secrets of why it evolved is a small first step toward understanding how human-level intelligence evolved in nature, a research goal of the team.

“Swarming is a complex behavioral trait that increases the chance for survival,” Adami said. “Intelligence is an even more complex trait that also increases the chance for survival, so understanding one will help us understand the other.”

“We’re trying to learn about the problems that early animals faced that made intelligent behavior a favorable trait to evolve, with the goal of working our way up to understanding how early forms of intelligence evolved into the complex forms of adaptive, social and predictive intelligence humans are capable of,” Olson explained. “Essentially, we’re trying to digitally reproduce the evolutionary path to human-level intelligence.”

“Our main premise is that there is a reason for intelligence and that reason is survival,” Adami added. “Intelligence allows us to plan and predict what will happen further and further into the future and then act appropriately. The creature who can predict the furthest into the future will win.”

Besides Adami and Olson, other paper authors are Fred Dyer, chairperson of the MSU Department of Zoology; Arend Hintze, microbiology and molecular genetics post-doctoral researcher; and David Knoester, microbiology and molecular genetics National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow.

All the study’s authors are members of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Center that brings together biologists, computer scientists, engineers and researchers from other disciplines to study evolution as it happens.

The research was supported by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, NSF, the MSU High Performance Computing Center and the MSU Institute for Cyber Enabled Research.

Jorge Celi (second from left) leads a team to understand the Napo River and its floodplains.

In the United States, rivers and their floodplains are well-documented and monitored. Ecuador’s largest river, however, remains largely mysterious.

Research led by Michigan State University (MSU) is helping the South American country unravel the Napo River’s mystique to better balance its economic and environmental treasures.

The Napo River is about 670 miles long. It winds through the western Amazon basin in Ecuador and Peru, one of the most remote and biodiverse regions in the world, and provides access to valuable oil reserves.

“Local residents have long used the river for their livelihoods and transportation, and recently there’s been an increase in traffic from oil companies that are exploring and drilling in the region,” said Jorge Celi, a zoology doctoral student at MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station. “We are interested in gaining a better understanding of the ecohydrology of the river and its floodplains to assess the river’s overall impact on the region.”

Celi has been studying the Napo River region since 2007. The relationship of river and floodplain affects the kinds and diversity of plant communities and the feeding and migration of fish, reptiles and aquatic mammals, such as pink freshwater dolphins. Local indigenous communities depend on the river-floodplain system for ecosystem services such as the harvest of fish, wildlife and native plants for food as well as small-scale agriculture. Ecotourism also has become increasingly important.

Proposals to improve the navigability and control flooding of the Napo River have been considered by Ecuadorian officials who seek to make the river a commercial barge waterway. One of the research team’s goals is to document the river in its “wild” state before major engineering work is conducted, Celi said.

“We know much about the Amazon River, but we know very little about the Napo River, such as when it floods or the depth and reach of its floodwaters,” he said. “Our research will help guide economic development to the benefit of Ecuador and the local residents, while promoting conservation of the region.”

The field research has been arduous. Teammates were shuttled up and down the river via motorized canoes. They trudged through swampy rainforests, constantly sweating in the hot and humid conditions, and being pestered by mosquitoes and (occasionally) bees. They also had to remain alert for poisonous snakes, spiders, piranhas and electric eels while attempting to locate hidden monitors ­– many beneath murky floodwaters.

“On our last trip, we had to dive under the water to retrieve some of our equipment,” Celi said. “Our guide was amazing. Without any markers, he always found the exact tree in this immense jungle under which we’d find our monitors.”

Along with support from accomplished local guides, Celi’s team received aerial assistance from NASA. As part of a month-long expedition, NASA mapped a number of Central and South American rivers and wetlands using new radar technology to penetrate dense jungle canopies and detect flooding beneath. The partnership is producing detailed maps of the Napo floodplains.

Armed with this information, decision-makers can view development projects in the context of long-term social and ecological sustainability, Celi said.

Celi’s research has been supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society and the World Wildlife Fund.

Thomas Hamann

Thomas Hamann, Michigan State University (MSU) assistant professor of chemistry, has received a 2013 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.

The awards program supports the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences. Based on institutional nominations, the program provides discretionary funding to faculty at an early stage in their careers. Each winner receives an unrestricted research grant of $75,000.

Specific criteria for selection include an independent body of scholarship attained within the first five years of their appointment as independent researchers; a dedication and contribution to education in the chemical sciences, particularly with respect to undergraduates; awards and honors; publication of research achievements in leading journals; and success in attracting research funding.

“Tom is a tremendously creative chemist who is truly the definition of a teacher-scholar,” said Rob Maleczka, MSU professor and Department of Chemistry chairperson. “He is an internationally recognized expert in the area of solar energy conversion, where his work represents a unique confluence of materials synthesis and design, fabrication and characterization of nanostructured devices, and theoretical modeling. In the classroom, he has taught everything from freshman chemistry to graduate special topics courses. He also established the Lansing area’s first Science Cafe where, over food and drinks, the general public can explore and discuss the latest scientific topics.”

Hamann, who joined the MSU faculty in 2008, was nominated by Maleczka and received letters of support from Daniel Nocera (Harvard University professor and Visiting Hannah Chair at MSU), Gerald Meyer (Department of Chemistry chair, The Johns-Hopkins University), and Joseph Hupp (professor of chemistry, Northwestern University).

“I am honored to be among the 13 individuals selected to receive the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award this year,” Hamann said. “It is especially important to me because it recognizes and supports what I am most passionate about in my career: education and research.”

Hamann was also recognized with a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2012 and a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Award in 2011.

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc., was established in 1946 to advance the science of chemistry, chemical engineering and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances.

Excavated bones of Hawaiian petrels – birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the Pacific – show substantial change in the birds’ eating habits.

Remains of endangered Hawaiian petrels – both ancient and modern – show how drastically today’s open seas fish menu has changed.

A research team, led by Michigan State University (MSU) and Smithsonian Institution scientists, analyzed the bones of Hawaiian petrels – birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the open waters of the Pacific. They found that the substantial change in petrels’ eating habits, eating prey that are lower rather than higher in the food chain, coincides with the growth of industrialized fishing.

The birds’ dramatic shift in diet, shown in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leaves scientists pondering the fate of petrels as well as wondering how many other species face similar challenges.

“Our bone record is alarming because it suggests that open-ocean food webs are changing on a large scale due to human influence,” said Peggy Ostrom, MSU zoologist and co-author. “Our study is among the first to address one of the great mysteries of biological oceanography – whether fishing has gone beyond an influence on targeted species to affect nontarget species and potentially, entire food webs in the open ocean.”

Hawaiian petrels’ diet is recorded in the chemistry of their bones. By studying the bones’ ratio of nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 isotopes, researchers can tell at what level in the food chain the birds are feasting; generally, the larger the isotope ratio, the bigger the prey (fish, squid and crustaceans).

Between 4,000 and 100 years ago, petrels had high isotope ratios, indicating they ate bigger prey. After the onset of industrial fishing, which began extending past the continental shelves around 1950, the isotope ratios declined, indicating a species-wide shift to a diet of smaller fish and other prey.

Much research has focused on the impact of fishing near the coasts. In contrast, the open ocean covers nearly half of the Earth’s surface. But due to a lack of historical records, fishing’s impact on most open-ocean animal populations is completely unknown, said lead author Anne Wiley, formerly an MSU doctoral student and now a Smithsonian postdoctoral researcher.

“Hawaiian petrels spend the majority of their lives foraging over vast expanses of open ocean,” she said. “In their search for food, they’ve done what scientists can only dream of. For thousands of years, they’ve captured a variety of fish, squid and crustaceans from a large portion of the North Pacific Ocean, and a record of their diet is preserved in their bones.”

Addressing fishery impact through a chronology of bones is remarkable. Most marine animals die at sea, where their bones are buried on the ocean bottom. But after three decades of fossil collection in the Hawaiian Islands – the breeding grounds of the Hawaiian petrel – co-author Helen James of the Smithsonian Institution and her colleagues have amassed a collection of more than 17,000 ancient Hawaiian petrel bones.

“The petrels breed in burrows and caves where, if they die, their bones are likely to be preserved for a long time,” James said. “It’s fortuitous to find such a rich bone record for a rare oceanic predator.”

Further studies are needed to explore how the shift down the food chain is affecting Hawaiian petrels. For a coastal seabird, however, a similar shift in diet has been associated with decreases in population – bad news for a federally protected bird.

Since petrels exploit fishing grounds from the equator to near the Aleutian Islands – an area larger than the continental United States – their foraging habits are quite telling. If petrels, signal flares for open-ocean food webs, have had a species-wide change in feeding habits, how many other predators around the world has fishing impacted? And what role do consumers play?

“What you choose to put on your dinner plate – that’s your connection with the endangered Hawaiian petrel, and with many other marine species,” Wiley said.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, MSU and the Smithsonian Institution.

MSU research shows that the transmission of malaria via mosquitoes to humans can be interrupted by using a strain of the bacteria Wolbachia.

Mosquitoes are deadly efficient disease transmitters. Research conducted at Michigan State University (MSU), however, demonstrates that they also can be equally adept in curing diseases such as malaria.

A study in the current issue of Science shows that the transmission of malaria via mosquitoes to humans can be interrupted by using a strain of the bacteria Wolbachia in the insects. In a sense, Wolbachia would act as a vaccine of sorts for mosquitoes that would protect them from malaria parasites. Treating mosquitoes would prevent them from transmitting malaria to humans, a disease that in 2010 affected 219 million people and caused an estimated 660,000 deaths.

“Wolbachia-based malaria control strategy has been discussed for the last two decades,” said Zhiyong Xi, MSU assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics. “Our work is the first to demonstrate Wolbachia can be stably established in a key malaria vector, the mosquito species Anopheles stephensi, which opens the door to use Wolbachia for malaria control.”

First, Xi’s team successfully demonstrated how Wolbachia can be carried by this malaria mosquito vector and how the insects can spread the bacteria throughout the entire mosquito population. Secondly, researchers showed that the bacteria can prevent those mosquitoes from transmitting malaria parasites to humans.

“We developed the mosquito line carrying a stable Wolbachia infection,” Xi said. “We then seeded them into uninfected populations and repeatedly produced a population of predominantly Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes.”

The basis for Xi’s latest findings is connected to the success of his work using Wolbachia to halt Dengue fever. For this research, Xi focused on the mosquito species Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti. This work helped launch a global effort to develop Wolbachia-based strategies to eliminate dengue and other diseases.

The key to the malaria research was identifying the correct species of Wolbachia – wAlbB – and then injecting it into mosquito embryos. Out of the thousands of embryos injected by research associate Guowu Bian, one developed into a female that carried Wolbachia. The mosquito line derived from this female has maintained Wolbachia wAlbB infection with a 100 percent infection frequency through 34 generations. The number could grow higher as this is simply the last generation the researchers have bred thus far, Xi said.

The team then introduced various ratios of Wolbachia-infected females into a noninfected mosquito population. In each case, the entire population carried the bacteria in eight generations or less.

Using this promising approach to tackle malaria ­­– the biggest vector-borne disease ­– gives scientists and world health officials another important tool to fight malaria.

Once Wolbachia has been released into a mosquito population, it is quite possible that it won’t need to be reapplied, making it more economical than other methods like pesticide or human vaccine. This adds special value to the feasibility of this control strategy, considering most of the malaria endemic areas are suffering from poverty, Xi said.

Additional scientists from MSU’s microbiology and molecular genetics department who contributed to the study include Deepak Joshi, Peng Lu, Guoli Zhou, Xiaoling Pan and Yao Xu. George Dimopoulos and Yuemei Dong of Johns Hopkins University and researchers from Sun Yat-Sen University also co-authored the paper.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and a Monash University grant from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health through the Vector-Based Transmission of Control: Discovery Research program of the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The MSU Museum has a new gallery, Evolution in Action, that explores evolution of biological systems and technologies — evolution in living things, and also in computers and engineering. A new exhibit, “50,000” reveals an ongoing experiment, headed by Richard Lenski, Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial Ecology, where scientists have observed bacteria growing, competing, and evolving for 50,000 generations in only 23 years.

Another Evolution in Action exhibit in the west gallery explores the evolution of social behaviors in hyenas as they cooperate, form coalitions and compete with lions. Future exhibits could include topics such as evolving robots that develop ever-more sophisticated collaborative behavior.

For this new exhibit series, the MSU Museum has introduced a new approach to exhibit-making: components that are designed to be modular, for placement at the museum and easily reproducible for installation in other locations. MSU Museum educators expect the exhibit adaptations to be developed and circulated around the partner universities as well as other learning centers in an effort to help advance public understanding of science.

For more information, visit: http://museum.msu.edu/?q=node/325.

Debra Dotterer

Debra Dotterer, director of undergraduate affairs for Michigan State University’s College of Natural Science (CNS), was recently elected Great Lakes Region 5 Chairperson within the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA).

Dotterer, who will begin serving this fall, was honored by the recognition and looks forward to her new role.

“It is very humbling to be elected by your peers,” Dotterer said. “I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to work with outstanding volunteers throughout the Great Lakes region to provide academic advisors with high quality professional development opportunities that will meet their diverse needs.”

G. Mark Voit, CNS associate dean for undergraduate studies, said that Dotter’s election is not only a testament to the respect and regard that her peers have for her, but is also recognition of her significant professional contributions to the field of academic advising.

“What a great choice for leadership in academic advising,” he said. “Deb Dotterer exemplifies excellence in comprehensive service to students. She has helped improve academic services to students, individually and collectively, and has distinguished herself within the college, across the university and nationally within the advising profession.”

Charted as a nonprofit organization in 1979, NACADA promotes quality academic advising and professional development of its membership to ensure the educational development of students. NACADA has more than 10,000 members representing all 50 United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and several international countries. The organization consists of faculty members, professional advisors, counselors and others in academic and student affairs concerned with the intellectual, personal and vocational needs of students.