Neuroscience integrates research, outreach

Graduate student Jeremy Teissere spent part of his last summer break scouring junkyards and home-supply stores for an assortment of odds and ends: chicken wire, scrap metal, lumber, beads, paper cups, bits of cloth, and pieces of clay.

The unconventional activity fit with the philosophy of the Neuroscience Training Program, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Teissere is completing his second year in one of the oldest and most highly regarded neuroscience programs in the nation. The UW–Madison program is distinctive for its integrated academic approach and strong emphasis on undergraduate education and community outreach.

And that’s in part why Teissere was haunting the junkyards. He spent the summer of 1998 providing an introduction to neuroscience to gifted students in an accelerated program at Johns Hopkins University. The raw materials enabled the youngsters to build a model of a functional synapse, the gap between nerve cells.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Teissere says of the class. “We didn’t want to be didactic – we wanted it to be hands-on and integrative. And one of the things I’ve developed here is not only a sense of the importance of being a good scholar and a good scientist, but also an appreciation of how important it is to be a good educator.”

Taking neuroscience to the community is integral to the program Ronald Kalil has directed since 1975. Graduate students, along with undergraduates who take courses in the program, have brought neuroscience into classrooms around Madison and in Milwaukee so students can see the human brain and how it works. This year, for example, students in the program presented interactive exhibits at the Madison Children’s Museum during Brain Awareness Week, a national observance of which the program is a charter member.

The program also helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds become involved in science. Five years ago, the program established a co-operative agreement with the UW-Milwaukee minority affairs office. This outreach program has brought hundreds of Milwaukee students to lab visits and lectures at UW–Madison; placed students in neuroscience labs for summer research experiences; and provided an opportunity for faculty and students in the program to teach students in the Milwaukee Public Schools about the brain. This summer, the program will be involved in hosting nearly one hundred Milwaukee high-school students interested in science.

The neuroscience program is one of just six cross-campus doctoral programs in biology at UW–Madison, and one of the first to offer courses under its own auspices. It is one of the few graduate programs that offers courses for undergraduates.

To encourage undergrads to do neuroscience research, the program has created a sequence of research and thesis courses that can lead to an honors degree in neuroscience. For many years, the program has also awarded an annual prize to an undergraduate for outstanding research in neuroscience.

The program hasn’t wavered from its primary mission of training graduate students to become neuroscientists. In that area, its stature as a leading graduate program is clear. In the last two reviews by the National Institutes of Health, the university’s neuroscience program received near-perfect scores.