TEACHING CONTRIBUTIONS AND INTERESTS

(A) Statement of Recent Teaching Interests and Activities

I have been involved as a teacher and advisor at The University of Rhode Island since 1991 and have continued thought-out my various other academic and industry commitments. More recently, I have become a full Professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. One of my major goals at URI has been to contribute to the development a comprehensive educational program in the fields of biotechnology.  I envision that such a program should broadly introduce students to the field as well as prepare them experientially specifically for careers. To accomplish this goal I have established three new educational offerings at URI, including a general survey course, BCH 190, that is open to majors and non-majors as a general education course and two undergraduate laboratory experience oriented opportunities. I have served on over seven graduate committees and am currently the advisor for two graduate students. I have also served as a mentor to over sixty student interns and have mentored a program that has included over thirty high school students in laboratory experience.  

The BCH 190 course, which is titled ‘Issues in Biotechnology: The Way We Work With Life’, has also been the basis for the formation of a non-profit organization called lifeedu.org (see the website of lifeedu.org for more information) A thirty DVD set has been developed from this course as an educational resource for students and teachers.  From this resource, this course is currently being developed as an on-line eLearning course which would be the first of its kind at URI.  

Recognizing the broad educational need concerning new courses related to biotechnology at URI, I have developed and piloted a suite of integrated new courses (summarized in below in Table1). The first three of these courses in the series have been tested over the past several years, and as fledgling program has been received with a high degree of student demand and interest. The student evaluations have shown a high level of reception.

Table 1 Comprehensive Suite of New Biotechnology Courses at URI

Course                                       Title                                       Objective                          

BCH  190                 Issues in Biotechnology:      General survey lecture content

                                     Way We Work With Life             for majors and non-majors

PLS  480/481X   Modern Techniques in                      Project-based laboratory

                                    Genetic Engineering                on plant transgenic biology

BCH 491/492               Research in Biochemistry           Experiential internship in plant       

                        Special Projects                                   transgenic biology

BCH 500X       Principles and Techniques      Project-based laboratory on                

                        of Molecular Cloning               vector construction for transgenics  

This suite of new courses provides an integrated and interdependent educational, training, outreach and research experience in biotechnology. Clearly these courses are résumé builders and many of the students have been successfully placed in industry and graduate school. Lab-based research activities that are part of the existing curriculum center on applications of plant transgenics or plant genetic engineering.  This activity requires unique gene constructs to be generated for subsequent introduction into plant materials.  Collaborators such as those at Yale University and Washington University currently provide these constructs.  I have also suggested that through the adaptation of another new course (500X) we will be able to generate these gene constructs while at the same time providing a unique learning experience for our students in vector construction and design.  Students would receive valuable experience with fundamental techniques of molecular biology and generate unique experimental materials to be used in other laboratory courses (480/481) in the curriculum.

I also believe this project-based model will be implemented in the development of related biotechnology courses (i.e. Bioinformatics, Genomics, etc.) by URI and other institutions including our collaborators from the Historically Black 1890s in the Southern Agricultural Consortium for Underserved Communities (SACUC). I have recently received USDA funding together with Fort Valley State University in a grant titled “Educating the Educators” to implement the same program.

The following is a brief description of these courses and the intent of the program.

(I) Issues in Biotechnology: Way We Work With Life (BCH 190 and other cross listings)⁵.  Over the last five years I have piloted a new course at URI that provides a panoramic yet comprehensive perspective on DNA, genetics, and biotechnology and its impact on the environmental and life sciences, medicine, and agriculture. The Way We Work With Life provides basic content and is intended for the general undergraduate students regardless of their major or degree program with no prerequisites (see Appendix) Indeed, this class has been in high demand (enrolling 100-200 students per semester) and provides a pool of students for recruitment into the other courses of the series. This course is now a general education course at URI that fulfills the science requirement and a requirement for a biotechnology minor at URI.  Our pilot offerings have also been open to the general public, life science industry staff, and High School teachers and students (Supported by Pfizer Inc., The AMGEN Foundation and lifeedu.org) demonstrating the appeal and accessibility of this course.  This course is currently being presented (Fall 2005) at URI and is being filmed and taped for DVD production and dissemination through public access television. In the year 2004-2005 a grant sponsored by a grant through the AMGEN Foundation, High School teachers have taken the course free of charge for their continuing degree requirements. The course materials have been the basis for the creation of lifeedu.org (pronounced, life e-d-u). a 501 c(3)  non-profit organization established for the creation, production, and distribution of educational materials on DNA, genetics, and modern biotechnology for middle school, high school, general undergraduate and the general public. Please visit the web site at www.lifeedu.org  for further information about biotechnology education materials, lectures, seminars and workshops.

This course, Issues in Biotechnology, is intended for the general public, Life Science Industry staff, high school teachers and undergraduate students regardless of their major or degree program. There are no prerequisites. The course aims to accomplish three goals: 1) to provide basic knowledge about DNA and gene expression that is fundamental to the how biological life functions, 2) to present the current applications in biotechnology, and career opportunities in the growing fields that are related to biotechnology; and 3) to examine issues and ethics concerning the future of biotechnology and our society.

(II) Modern Techniques in Genetic Engineering (PLS 480/481) ⁶. Next, we have piloted a new two semester course sequence (see Appendix), for undergraduate students that is entirely project-based^1-4,6. In this unique course, each student receives their own gene construct to introduce and evaluate in transgenic crop plants of interest.  These constructs are the basis for real world research projects established with university collaborators from Yale, Cornell, the Salk Institute, Washington University and the University of Rhode Island.  In the beginning of the fall semester students are introduced to the theory and practice of gene transfer in plants, utilizing cereal crops (rice and corn) and turfgrass species as systems of choice, resulting in transgenic cell colonies by the end of the first semester.  In the second semester, the students return and conduct the molecular and gene expression analysis of these transgenics.  Each gene introduction project is written up and submitted as a poster presentation to international meetings (American Society of Plant Biology, ASPB) ^6-11.  The students are all listed as co-authors and I have sponsored several to attend meetings. Thus, this is not merely a trivial training exercise.  Here each transgene is of real world research significance encompassing academic and research questions concerning basic plant biology and practical agricultural biotechnology.  In our first offering of this course we included twelve undergraduates, one graduate student, four High School teachers and fifteen High School students. The results from the first year were published as abstracts and presented to the 2003 ASPB meetings in Honolulu, Hawaii.  We sent eight posters to the ASPB meetings^6-11 co-authored by the students and represented by four undergraduates, one graduate student and two High School students who were sponsored to attend by lifeedu.org.  The first time the course was offered it became evident that the time commitment on the part of the 17 students was extremely demanding.  To make the sequence even more productive, this year we have included 42 undergraduate interns (recruited through MIC190) who are mentored by the students in the class and receive course credit (BCH 491/492 Special Projects: Research in Biochemistry).   In addition to interns, we have also included High School teachers^9,10, who receive CEU credits, and mentor High School students in the laboratory.  The students learn science by actually doing it; as well as other qualities of good scientists such as patience, persistence, perseverance, attention to detail, responsibility, and record keeping. This approach drives interest in underlying fundamentals through current and advanced technologies while providing real incentive to burn the midnight oil.

Modern Techniques in Genetic Engineering, (formerly PLS 480/481) is currently being offered (2004-05) as a BCH 499 Special Topics course and will be re-introduced next year under BCH.  I believe that the process of science education should mirror the process of science itself.  So these projects are all real life and on real research.   I have developed a group of projects together with world renowned collaborators for this course.   For example, in a functional genomics project on rice, genetic insertions into genes result in knockout mutations that define phenotypes. Six constructs provided by Dr. Stephen Dellaporta’s lab at Yale University have been developed and introduced into rice to disperse Ds transpositions throughout the rice genome where each event contains an independent, dispersed insertion of a genetically engineered Ds transposon at a defined chromosomal site.  These events will be used to create a knockout library in the rice genome.  The project-based objective of this study is to develop the necessary transgenics in the two semester course to establish a library of randomly dispersed Ds elements throughout the rice genome.  Another set of constructs have been provided through the laboratory of Dr. Michael Neff at Washington University and the Salk Institute to overexpress the BAS1 gene in rice and turfgrass.  BAS1 is involved in the brassinosteroid pathway in plants and overexpression of a mutant gene in tobacco and Arabidopsis has resulted in dwarfed plants.  Dwarf crop plants had been the basis of the Green Revolution. The goal of this project is to investigate overexpression of BAS1 in monocots with the possibility to produce new dwarf varieties. Lastly, we are working with Dr. Ray Wu’s group from Cornell University to introduce constructs into various turfgrass species and rice that should result in drought tolerance.  All of the results from these projects are major contributions to basic science and to student training.

In conjunction with this year’s course conducting the above experiments, we have undergraduate interns who report to the students in that course.  The production of plant transgenics requires extensive cell culture techniques, and is time-consuming and laborious.  The student interns acquire laboratory skills and resume building techniques in the context of working with the students on these real world projects.  In turn, we expect that this year’s interns will become next years students in the two semester course mentoring next years interns and so on.  Similarly, we have had four High School teachers attend one night a week with five of their selected High School students.  We recently received a donation of used equipment from Monsanto Corporation that will allow us to provide these High School teachers each with a laminar flow hood and an incubator, so that these five students with their teacher can return to instruct and mentor their classmates in plant cell and tissue culture techniques. By including High School teachers and students in this program we have expanded the outreach and accessibility of this program.  Among the teachers who participated last year we have a continued interest and commitment this year.  From the High School students (and their parents) we received glowing reports about how it changed their lives!

(III) Research in Biochemistry: Special Projects (BCH 491/492). The above two courses dove-tail with an internship program that have been developed over the past four years with industry and federal grant support.  This Program provides students with for-credit internships and an introduction to various techniques used in cell culture and genetic engineering of plants, as well as an opportunity for follow-up to the other courses.  This internship program was created to extend the student’s laboratory and content course experience to include further research and the possibility to publish their results or continue to work on the project for a senior thesis research project.  Interns also work with students in the two semester course previously described.  The students involved have highly endorsed the experience and have enjoyed a high success of subsequent placement upon graduation; some have become graduate students in Plant Molecular Biology, at, for example, Penn State, Stanford, and Yale, while others have become employees in industry, such as Amgen, Pfizer, and HybriGene. We recognize the value of the educational component of practical internships for the students and seek to continue and extend its development with the current proposal to NSF by providing expanded laboratory resources. Together these synergistic curricular opportunities provide a strong basis for a developing program in biotechnology at URI that requires new and additional equipment in order to be sustained.

(C) Courses taught at University of Rhode Island (1997-present)

            URI Courses taught from 1997-2000.

BMMG  Plant Transgenics (funded by DeKalb Genetics Corporation).  Spring 1997

Special Topics in Plant Science: Plant Biotechnology and Agriculture. Spring 1999, 2000

PLS 491/591 Gene Transfer to Plants. Fall 1999.

PLS 492/592  Molecular analysis of transgenic plants. Spring 2000.

            New URI Curriculum Improvement: New Courses developed and taught since 1999

Issues in Biotechnology: The Way We Work With Life series: AFS 190, PLS 190, MIC 190 and BCH 190 Issues in Biotechnology. Fall 1999/ Fall 2000 Spring 2001 Fall 2002, Spring 2003, Fall 2004, Spring 2005, Summer Session 2005, Fall 2005 Development of on-line classes and  distance learning.

            Modern Techniques in Genetic Engineering PLS 481/482X  Fall 2001/2002, Fall 2002/2003,

            Special Topics BCH 499  Fall 2004/2005

            URI Internship program PLS 491/492, F/S 2001, F/S 2002/2003, F/S 2003/2004, F/S 2004/2005  BCH 491 F/S 2005/2006

(F) Major Professor for URI graduate students; URI Graduate Thesis advisor (2003-present)

Current-Ph.D candidate Mr. John (Chip) Longo. University of Rhode Island, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, South Kingston RI, 2003-2006 Dissertation topic: Transposon mutagenesis in rice.   Expected completion Aug. 2006

Current-M.S candidate Mr. Joel Hague University of Rhode Island, Department of cell and Molecular Biology, South Kingston RI, 2003-2005 Thesis topic; Developmental analysis of the maize pollen specific promoter in transgenic rice. Expected completion Dec. 2005.

(D) Directed study, independent study, and other similar teaching responsibilities, last five years only

I have served as an undergraduate independent studies advisor for over sixty students in the past five years.  Much of this work was as a volunteer as I was acting Director for HybriGene Inc.

(E) Course and curriculum developments and other contributions by year

All of the courses that I have taught at the University of Rhode Island over the past eight years have been new. The most recent contributions have been already described above.

(F) Participation on other Graduate Student Committees at URI (1993- present)

While working at as a Research Scientist for  DeKalb Genetics Inc. and then HybriGene, Inc. and serving as an adjunct faculty member, Dr. Kausch served on five Ph. D committees and one MS committee for the University of Rhode Island and played an active role in student research (see also publications)

            Jane Knapp; University of Rhode Island, Department of Plant Science, South Kingston RI, 1993-1997; Genetic transformation in Orchidaceae; Genetic transformation of turfgrass.

            Srinivas Sonti: University of Rhode Island, Department of Chemical Engineering, South Kingston RI, 1993-97 Magnetic separation of biological structures; Magnetic triple helix affinity capture of plasmid DNA; quantification  of organelle recovery by magnetic separation.

            Peiyu Zeng: University of Rhode Island, Department of Plant Science, South Kingston RI, 1996-1999 Programmed senescence in soybean.

            Yuexia Wang University of Rhode Island, Department of Plant Science, South Kingston RI, 1999-2001 A transgenic approach to fungus resistance in Creeping Bentgrass

            Chhandak Basu University of Rhode Island, Department of Plant Science, South Kingston RI, 1999-2002 Isolation and characterization of a bidirectional promoter from rice and expression in transgenic grasses.

            Jessica Powell University of Rhode Island, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, South Kingston RI, 2001-2004