This year marked the third year for Dr. Chase at Hope College. Reaching this milestone meant she had significantly fewer new course preparations! Therefore, she was able to spend more time developing her problem-based learning unit based on the biochemical basis and validity of the Atkins diet in her biochemistry course. This teaching unit has been well received by the students and has helped them to better understand the regulation of metabolism. In addition to tweaking her courses, Dr. Chase was able to submit three proposals to support her research on membrane transport proteins, to the Towsley Scholar program at Hope College, to the Campbell Foundation, and a CAREER proposal to the National Science Foundation. She was thrilled that two of the three, the Towsley and Campbell proposals, were funded.

Dr. Chase also welcomed several new students into her lab this year. Joining the current lab group (Isabelle Phuong Le, Kelley Hutchins, and Matt Teusink) were Victoria Carlson (spring), Sarah Scholten (spring), Adam Hamilton (fall-summer), Brian Murphy (fall-summer), Ross Coleman (summer), and Nathan Hahn (summer). During the academic year, we focused our efforts on continuing to 1) determine the ionic requirements for membrane transporter function and 2) examine the acute regulation of the transporter by reactive oxygen species. The summer brought new changes to the project. Due to the loss of the radiation room for the summer (consequence of the big move into the new science building), we worked hard to develop a real-time spectroscopic assay for our transporter. We are still in the process of optimizing this assay. It was a productive year in the lab, and as a result, Dr. Chase presented the work at two conferences, the Society for Neuroscience Meeting in Orlando, Florida and a FASEB-sponsored Membrane Transport Meeting in Tucson, Arizona. In addition, Matt Teusink traveled to Denver, Colorado to present his work at the AAAS Meeting.

At home, Dr. Chase's two children continued to amaze their parents. Her daughter, Abby began her first year of preschool and began taking ballet classes, while her son, Cameron had a year of firsts-first steps, first birthday, first words, etc. Both children developed a love for the water, so summer evenings were spent at the beach or in the backyard with a sprinkler (a very close second). The family capped off the summer with a trip to Mackinac Island for some bike riding, stone skipping, and fudge!