Perhaps biology professor Sessions has, say, eight or ten extra hands. Or maybe four or five extra brains? These are just hypotheses, but somehow we have to explain this: At last count, he was collaborating with four students, two Hartwick professors, three alumni, one graduate student, an eco-artist, a community partner, researchers at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State (with whom he is sharing a National Science Foundation grant), and a Japanese researcher, largely via e-mail. He's also collaborating with the Molecular Cytogenetics Laboratory at Cambridge University in England (where Ryan Quarles '08 interned during J Term 2008). The question is: Is there anyone with whom Sessions isn't collaborating?
Consider his activities during a recent summer. Two students assisted Sessions on research involving amphibian populations at Pine Lake, heart regeneration and physiology in newts (with Professor of Biology Laura Malloy), and skin toxins in salamanders (with Associate Professor of Biology Mary Allen and Louise Hecker '00, a graduate student in molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan, where she also is a research associate in pediatric gastroenterology). (Take a breath.)
Additional summer research included studies of the molecular biology of limb development in amphibians, with Geff Stopper '00, who recently earned his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University; deformed salamanders, with Pieter Johnson, of the University of Wisconsin; salamander cytogenetics, with Steve Mezik '94; and the cytogenetics of an all-female, asexually reproducing species of salamander found in New York, with Todd Hunsinger, of the New York State Museum of Natural History. (Take another breath, not quite done.)
For a "SciArt" study called Imaging Biodiversity, Sessions continued work with artist Brandon Ballengee on high-resolution prints of salamanders and of leaves and flowers to illustrate the Checklist of the Vascular Flora of Pine Lake, a collaborative work by former biology professor Robert "Smitty" Smith and biology major Richard Rabeler '75 (who went on to earn a Ph.D. at Michigan State University and now is coordinator of museum collections at the University of Michigan Herbarium).
You might wonder why a professor at a liberal arts college is involved in so many research projects. Isn't that what professors at research universities do? Well, the old distinction between research and teaching no longer applies at liberal arts colleges. Increasingly, professors weave research experiences into their courses and bring students into faculty-led research. No latecomer to this trend, Hartwick has been supporting these kinds of activities for more than 30 years.
