It is with a great deal of pleasure that I update this site as an ex-department head! After five years, I was more than happy to resign from the post in order to transition to Tex Sordahl before starting my sabbatical January 2009. Those of you who know Tex can imagine that he was at least as thrilled to take the post.....

I am on sabbatical for the calendar year 2009, an odd schedule that straddles two academic years. (There really were staffing considerations that led to this plan, but one of the unexpected perks is that there are no committees for two years!) This spring I will sit in on some molecular and genomic biology courses at the University of Chicago while developing a bioethics course with Dr. Richard Perry, a faculty member at the Lutheran Theological School of Chicago. We will teach the course in Chicago to students from a 7-seminary consortium during January 2010, and I hope we can arrange to also include some Luther students. In addition, I will continue to work on the characterization of Nectria sequences from nonessential chromosomes, learning to annotate and compare gene structures with a new software system. As a technologically challenged individual, this will be a major project, the focus of my summer and fall sabbatical work. I am honored to receive the H. George and Jutta Anderson Fellowship, as well as support from Dr. Hans VanEtten at the University of Arizona-Tucson, to support my sabatical.

From a teaching standpoint, things have also changed. For the first time in my career at Luther, I am not involved in our introductory Principles of Biology course. Instead I am teaching a nonmajors course that has evolved to become The Biology of Race and Sex. I am finding this to be a very interesting approach to teaching basic genetics and developmental principles, and I think the students are quite involved. Genetics remains my major course, with Molecular Biology due to undergo some yet-to-be-determined modifications in conjunction with Cell Biology.

My kids are growing up! Mike is a sophomore in college, and the triplets are juniors in high school this year. The after school schedules are very hectic in the fall and spring, but it is fun. College visits will also punctuate my sabbatical year. Please continue to keep us posted on major shifts in your careers, potential for internships, and feedback on your college experiences - we are interested in your perspective!

Revised January 2009