In October, 1996, we dedicated the Overholt Human Anatomy Lab. Three months later I taught the first human dissection and anatomy course at Luther. It has been an incredible experience for our students (and for me, too). The human body is truly amazing in its intricacy and complexity, and students leave that course with a whole new appreciation for how the body is organized and how it functions. During the 2000-2001 school year I began offering this course twice, in the fall semester and January term. This allows 40 of our students the opportunity to do human dissection and upper level anatomy study.

In April, 2000, we announced the establishment of the Russell R. Rulon Endowed Chair in Biology. When I helped Russ Rulon celebrate his 60th birthday, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could secure funds to establish an endowed chair in recognition of his teaching/advising accomplishments and to have this chair in place by the time of his retirement. Several years and thousands of phone calls later, I and a committee of biology graduates succeeded in getting over 900 alumni and friends of Russ Rulon to pledge $1.14 million to establish the endowed chair. The best part was that somehow we kept it a secret until April 28, 2000, when the chair was announced at a special recognition dinner. And I definitely think that Russ Rulon was surprised. The weekend continued with a full day of concurrent seminars presented by Russ’s past students, another celebration dinner that night, a program honoring Russ and our other retiring biologists (John Tjostem and Dave Roslien), and a gala reception.

My current project isn’t quite as glamorous but definitely necessary. I’m working with Mary Lewis to write a lab manual for our human anatomy course for non-biology majors. Our job is to make human anatomy as exciting as possible to students who may just be taking this course to satisfy a science requirement or as a requirement for their major.

I also continue to teach nutrition and love being able to teach a course with so much practical application. Finally, histology remains a real favorite of mine; it’s one of those courses that ties together so much of the biology that students have previously studied.

Revised April 2007