CLAS Acts July 2022
Monthly newsletter of the tenure track faculty of the college
A Note from Dean Drake
Yesterday was an exciting day. On June 30, the CLAS Strategic Vision and Action Plan implementation teams reported to the whole group on their draft plans, and together the group worked to refine them. It was also the end of the fiscal year and just a little past Midsummer. So much done and so much left to do. But first, a long weekend!
Even as we work to implement the CLAS vision, our research and learning continue. In June, Christine Rener led our implementation team leaders in conversations about change leadership. We are grateful for Christine’s expertise. And several of us attended the AAC&U Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, where we were able to learn with and from talented colleagues from other institutions.
If you haven’t been following the campus news very closely, you shouldn’t miss some fun stories such as the banding of the peregrine chicks and our student brewers putting their mark on Trail Point Brewing as well as important work toward institutional improvement embodied in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging (DEI-AB) Framework co-developed by the divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. The section on using an equity lens to impact action may be especially useful. This work is more critical than ever.
This month wonderful candidates for the CLAS Academic Advising Center director position were interviewed, and I’m happy to announce that Dr. Cathy Buyarski will be joining us in mid-July. She spent most of her career at IUPUI, most recently serving as executive associate dean of University College and executive director of student success initiatives. I am excited about the deep expertise that Cathy will bring to CLAS and GVSU, and my thanks go out to Julie Amon-Mattox and Nick Woodward for serving our students’ needs so well as interim co-directors.
In only a month we will have the opportunity to welcome our newly hired TT faculty colleagues: Steven Dorland (ANT), Pengton Qu and Sarah Williams (ENG), Annie Whitlock (HST), Joy Oslund and Lisa Hawley (MTH), Edgar Page (MUS), Christopher Tyler Camarillo (PLS), and Joel Potrykus (VMA). Thanks to those of you who have helped them this summer as they navigate a wild housing market in addition to all the usual transitions.
In this month’s feature article, we highlight experiential learning--the work of one of your colleagues, Zeni Shabani, with six students involved in laboratory research that seeks to improve the plight of those who have succumbed to addiction. Please have a look; it may challenge some of your notions on the subject.
There is always a lot for us higher ed types to think about, but I hope that the summer also affords you time to balance the cerebral with some barefoot hours. Poet Mary Dreyspring seems to capture this balancing act (perhaps she knew some academics back in 1929?) in a poem called July in Michigan:
How green the wheat fields are against the sky,
How white the clouds are piled up in the blue
As the fast train goes screaming by!
Warmly,
Jen
The Surprising Rewards of Aversion: Student Research in the Lab of Zeni Shabani
Zeni Shabani, Biomedical Sciences, has an understandable preoccupation with why we do what we do—even when it isn’t in our enlightened self-interest. And he has a team of budding neuroscientists to help him.
“Fundamentally, there are two types of behavior: approval and avoidance. Some things are rewarded in the brain because they increase our survival. We try to repeat those. "Things like eating food,” Zeni explains. “In avoidance, the brain is trying to do the opposite; it tries to protect us from harm.”
His particular area of interest is where this goes terribly wrong, as in the case of drugs of dependence.
“Drugs of abuse sometimes hijack our brains propensity to reward or to produce aversion. Our genetics establish whether we have a tendency toward addiction to a particular thing.”
It seems that the layperson’s notion that you are either an addictive type or you aren’t is not quite accurate. Each drug of abuse presents a new possible vulnerability. Alcohol may not present a vulnerability leading to full loss of control for a particular person while opioids do, for instance. When your aversion to something bad for you is low, you are vulnerable. This has a genetic component.
And it is complicated. That may be a saving grace.
While our chance of ridding ourselves of moral failings, ingrained personality traits, or tempting environments may be low, this genetic angle offers the possibility of pharmaceutical help with protective aversion.
“We are looking for ‘druggable target’ genes that are important to curbing drug intake. Many people go to rehab and can abstain for a while, but later relapse. We are looking for a medication that will keep them off the drug of abuse for good.”
Zeni’s lab works in collaboration with the lab of Tamara Phillips, professor of behavioral neuroscience in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University where Zeni did his post doc. He is currently working with six students, one of whom has an S3 grant. They tend to be biomedical sciences and/or psychology students with an interest in neuroscience who come into the lab after their sophomore year when they have acquired necessary skills.
Zeni emphasizes the degree of trust that is necessary for the responsible roles they must play in his lab so usually they either took one of his courses or are referred by another student in the lab. Experience has taught him how important every member of the team is to the dynamic.
The Shabani lab uses mouse models to test the effectiveness of a substance provided by a well-known pharmaceutical company to see its effects on an identified gene, especially how effectively it creates aversion. They are currently working through a 40-day process made up of two 20-day cycles of observations. This will be followed by data analysis.
The data is exciting, and Zeni lights up at the prospect of the students presenting their data analysis at conferences later in the summer and beyond, such as the Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experiences (Mid-SURE) and Neuroscience 2022. He is also working on a publication from the data which will see one of his students as co-author and others acknowledged.
“This is good for their medical school and graduate school applications,” Zeni adds. “I develop a deep connection to these students, and they are deeply connected to each other. The teamwork produces a bond that keeps them in contact long after they leave my lab.”
The rewards keep them coming back.