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| 2001
Annual Fall Meeting - Education Award Winners |
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SUMMARY
| EDUCATION
AWARD WINNERS
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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