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| 2001
Award for Education in Neuroscience |
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Drs.
Edwin J. Furshpan, Edward A. Kravitz, and David D. Potter
The 2001 ANDP Education Award was given
to Drs. Edwin Furshpan, Edward Kravitz, and David
Potter. These three Professors from Harvard Medical School's
Department of Neurobiology have made innovative contributions to
teaching and mentoring that have continued throughout their careers.
While they have in common their career-long participation in the
founding and development under the leadership of Stephen Kuffler of the
Department of Neurobiology at Harvard (one of the first in the country,
if not the first), they are clearly very different individuals-in style
and in substance. Their contributions have included attention to
mentoring activities and a passionate involvement in the development of
some of the earliest programs fostering minority participation in
neuroscience (and science) education, innovations in curriculum
development at the level of graduate education of research students and
medical students, and more recently, a focus on developing materials
suitable for encouraging an interest in science at the level of
secondary and primary education. While any one of these might have been
the focus for honoring them, the spectrum of activities and a
career-long dedication to education and encouragement of an interest and
excitement in science have been dramatic features of their
participation.
Edwin Furshpan is the Robert Henry Pfeiffer Professor of Neurobiology
(emeritus) at Harvard and a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of
the Harvey Society. In 2001 he received a Distinguished Alumni Award
from the California Institute of Technology. He was a co-director of the
Neuroscience course for medical students at HMS from 1962-84 and chaired
a committee to develop the neuroscience module of the "New Pathway
Curriculum" for medical students, which featured a case-based
method of teaching. Starting in the early 1980's, with the support of
NSF and then NASA, he and David Potter extended the successful
case-based approach to development of teaching exercises for high school
and middle school students, recognizing that this could make the subject
directly relevant to their lives and engage them in science in a more
personal way. These activities were particularly directed toward schools
with substantial minority enrollment. Part of the program included
teacher training as well. As a further extension of the case-based
neuroscience program, these materials were extended to topics of broader
interest in biology. Beginning in the late 1960's following the
assassination of Martin Luther King, and continuing throughout this
period Drs. Furshpan, Kravitz, and Potter took an active and aggressive
role in altering the poor representation of minorities at Harvard by
insisting on recruitment goals, and leading further efforts to reach out
to secondary level minority students and to institute the minority
mentoring that is necessary to allow them to succeed in an unfamiliar
environment. These activities involved summer programs for minority
undergraduates, recruiting trips, and development of programs in
collaboration with historically black institutions.
Edward A. Kravitz is the George Packer Berry Professor of Neurobiology
at HMS and also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the
Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He
is very proud of his "Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring" award
from HMS in 1998. He was a co-founder of the Neurobiology of Disease
Teaching Workshops at the SFN as well as a participant in the
Neurobiology of Disease and ethics courses for graduate students at HMS
and was a director of the Neurobiology Course at MBL. He participates in
activities directed toward education of minorities in sciences and
medicine, and has worked in this capacity at Harvard, MBL, and the City
College of New York (his alma mater), and has worked in programs for
high school students at the Society for Neuroscience, at Harvard Medical
School, and at the University of Puerto Rico.
David Potter is Robert Winthrop Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard
(emeritus) and arrived at Harvard Neurobiology after postdoctoral
fellowships with the great and famous pioneers of modern neurobiology,
Sir Bernard Katz and Stephen Kuffler. He also participated in the Human
Nervous System and Behavior Course for medical students, taught at MBL,
and was a key player, in fact Chairman, of the HMS Committee on
Disadvantaged Students in 1968-69. In promoting diversity at Harvard and
elsewhere, he served as a member of the joint committee on the Status of
Women at Harvard, and was a mentor or advisor for the HMS Minority
Pre-matriculation Research program, and the neuroscience programs at
Meharry Medical School and at Morehouse Medical School. Since 1997, he
has been a lecturer and fieldwork supervisor in a course entitled
"Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building",
taught at the Kennedy School of Government, and he has consulted at the
Pine Ridge and Navajo Reservations. He is active in areas of minority
education, training and professional advancement at the Society for
Neuroscience (Chair of the Committee) and has participated in ANDP
efforts in this direction over the years.
Many of these innovative programs are the foundation of our current
attempts to increase minority participation in science and
health-related activities, to increase science literacy at all levels,
and to develop ways of communicating the excitement and content of
science to learners at all levels of participation in the educational
system-from kindergarten through graduate research training to the lay
public.
This all sounds very serious, but these are 3 light-hearted and very
funny guys. Part of their mentoring success is most certainly due to
that humor and to the warmth and inclusiveness they extend to everyone
who wanders into their circle. A clear reflection of their success is
the preponderant representation of their medical and graduate students
in neurology and neuroscience research today.
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