Annual Report Text, 2001-2002

This past year has been another busy and exciting year for Dr. Leah Chase. In the fall semester, she began teaching her newly developed first year seminar course entitled, "I Think, Therefore I am: Explorations in Consciousness". She found this class offered a nice balance to her teaching schedule, which included Biochemistry and the General Chemistry Lab. Dr. Chase also participated in Science Day and had the opportunity to share the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience research with over 70 high-schools students and their teachers. In addition, she worked with Emily Schwartz ('02) and Layne Hillman ('04) on her research project and continued to develop a mammalian expression system for the study of a cystine/glutamate transporter.

The spring semester began with a real bang with the birth of Dr. Chase's second child, Cameron David Wallar on January 14. Therefore, she spent the first 6 weeks of the semester at home, experiencing first hand the wonders of human development and the awesome bliss of motherhood. Dr. Chase returned to work at the end of February, a bit sleep-deprived, but ready to get back in the lab and the classroom to teach her Neuroscience class and Cells and Genetics Lab. Because of the maternity leave, Dr. Chase's neuroscience class worked extra hard to cover an entire semester's worth of classes into only 8 weeks. The students truly rose to the challenge, and Dr. Chase was extremely appreciative of their efforts! She also was very excited by the fact that Emily Schwartz ('02) continued to work in her research lab full time to keep the research project moving forward. Lastly, Dr. Chase learned that her CCLI-AI proposal for the development of a Neuroscience teaching lab (Co-PI Chris Barney, Biology) had been funded, so she set to work spending this money and writing a neuroscience lab for next year.

During the summer, Dr. Chase had the opportunity to attend a Gordon Conference on Membrane Transport Proteins, and came back to the lab full of enthusiasm and plenty of research ideas!! Fortunately, she had 4 excellent research students in the lab, Isabelle Phuong Le ('04), Matthew Teusink ('02, fall), Kelley Hutchins ('05) and Nicole Steele ('03, St. Catherine's University), who came to the lab ready to work hard. They made tremendous progress on the research project outlined in her Campbell Foundation proposal. This work will undoubtedly serve as a basis for two manuscripts, which will hopefully be submitted in the Spring of 2003.

Last but not least, Dr. Chase and her husband, Dr. Brad Wallar, spent quality time with their children this summer, watching them grow, explore and reach many new milestones. It was a great year!