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Crimson and blue in the White House

Chancellor, professor take part in presidential ceremonies

A pair of Jayhawks recently paid visits to the White House, and met the chief resident, within a span of a week.

Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and three other leaders of public research universities hand delivered to President Obama Jan. 6 a letter from 79 public university leaders pledging to address the national shortage of science and mathematics teachers. Joy Ward, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, was honored Jan. 13 as a 2009 winner of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

UKANTEACH

Gray-Little represented UKanTeach, an innovative program established in 2007 at KU to address the state’s deficit in science and math teachers and the graying of teachers nearing retirement in those fields. UKanTeach provides a pathway for students to graduate with degrees in math and science and to obtain teaching licensure in four years. The program is projected to graduate 120 math and science teachers a year by 2014.

In the letter, university presidents and chancellors pledge “to substantially increase the number and diversity of high-quality science and mathematics teachers we prepare, and to build better partnerships among universities, community colleges, school systems, state governments, business and other stakeholders.” Thirty-nine institutions and three university systems also pledge in the letter to at least double the number of science and mathematics teachers graduated by 2015.

Gray-Little was joined at the White House by the presidents of the universities of Colorado, Kentucky and Maryland system. They represented the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

The presentation was made in conjunction with Obama’s second “Educate to Innovate” campaign event for excellence in science, technology, engineering and math education. At the event, the president honored 100 educators — including Sherry Helus, a third-grade teacher in Wamego; DeAnn Swofford, a science teacher in Gardner; and Mary Beth Meggett, a KU graduate who teaches science in Charleston, S.C. — from across the country for awards received for excellence in mathematics and science teaching and mentoring. The event was webcast at www.whitehouse.gov/live.

Obama also announced key new partnerships in his campaign to help reach his goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade. In November, Obama announced a series of high-powered partnerships involving leading companies, foundations, nonprofit organizations and science and engineering societies dedicated to motivating and inspiring young people across America to excel in science and math.

Obama’s three overarching priorities for STEM education are

— Increasing STEM literacy so all students can think critically in science, math, engineering and technology

— Improving the quality of math and science teaching so American students are no longer outperformed by those in other nations

— Expanding STEM education and career opportunities for underrepresented groups, including women and minorities

PRESIDENTIAL EARLY CAREER AWARD FOR SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS

Ward’s award is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a young scientist or engineer in the United States.

Ward researches plants that grew during the last ice age —about 18,000 years to 20,000 years ago — when low carbon dioxide levels may have been highly limiting for plant life.

According to the National Science Foundation, the PECASE awards “are intended to identify and honor outstanding researchers who are beginning their independent research careers, and to provide recognition of their potential for leadership across the frontiers of scientific knowledge during the 21st century.”

“There is a tremendous amount of excellent science being conducted in this country, and I am truly humbled and honored to have received this presidential recognition,” Ward said. “The University of Kansas provides an excellent environment for conducting scientific research, and I am fortunate to have such wonderful colleagues and resources in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Furthermore, I am very appreciative of the assistance that the Institute for Educational Research and Public Service has provided for my outreach activities to students and for the support of the National Science Foundation and Dorothy Lynch through the Wohlgemuth Faculty Scholar Award. In the years ahead, I look forward to training the next generation of scientists and meeting future scientific challenges at the University of Kansas.”

Through her investigations of changing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from the last ice age through the future, Ward shows how plants might fare in a future of much higher carbon dioxide concentrations on Earth.

“Plants are amazing,” Ward said. “They can actually take carbon right out of the atmosphere and use it as their food source, whereas we as humans have to eat a variety of organic food sources in order to get carbon in our diet. But the availability of carbon dioxide has changed over geological time.”

According to Ward, ancient air bubbles trapped inside ice cores show that there was about half as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the last ice age compared with present times.

In her lab at KU, Ward has found that today’s plants have difficulty thriving under such conditions.

“We can scrub carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at very controlled levels to simulate the past,” said Ward. “We have found that the average reduction in growth is about 50 percent for plants grown at these ice age carbon dioxide levels compared with the modern value. For some species, the reduction in growth can be as high as 90 percent and some species completely fail to reproduce.”

Ward earlier won a $869,000 CAREER award from the NSF for her research — an honor that qualified her for the PECASE award announced today.

Ward and 19 other NSF recipients of the PECASE award will be recognized for their scientific achievements at a White House ceremony this fall.