GC&SU Shares NSF grant with Arizona State University

Georgia College & State University and Arizona State University will share a $180,000 grant from the National Science Foundation Geology and Paleontology Program that will help support student study and research in the field of paleontology, the study of fossil organisms.

The grant was co-written by Kathleen Pigg, associate professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, and Dr. Melanie DeVore, assistant professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at GC&SU. Pigg and DeVore will co-direct the project.

"This is a well-deserved accomplishment for Dr. DeVore," said Dr. Bill Wall, chair of the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences. "She has been a preeminent paleobotanist for many years now and she is doing what we all strive to do here in biology, and that is to find a productive mix between teaching and research and how we can do both simultaneously."

The grant will be awarded over a period of three years to support the study of Paleocene plants (about 57 million years old) from North Dakota and the geologic context of preservation and relationships with living flowering plants. The seed money for the proposal came from the GC&SU faculty research grant program. GC&SU and ASU competed with major research institutions to get the project funded, said DeVore.

"What that says is that institutions like GC&SU are capable of supporting significant research in areas such as paleobotany," she said. "The National Science Foundation not only looks at the facilities to support the research, but it also has seven reviewers and a panel to go over the professional credentials of the people who will direct the project."

This is the first time in 24 years that Georgia College & State University has received funding from the foundation, DeVore said.

"Having an NSF grant awarded to our paleontology program further drives home how strong GC&SU is in this field," she said.

Dr. Beth Rushing, dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said that GC&SU places a lot of emphasis on strong student-faculty research programs.

"In awarding this grant, the National Science Foundation has recognized the high quality not only of our paleontology program, but also of our student research efforts," she said. "The findings generated by this research will contribute significantly to the knowledge base in paleobotany."

The award will help fund the doctoral study at Arizona State of a former GC&SU graduate student Witt Taylor. Taylor will be doing fieldwork in May and will get support to attend national meetings to present research, DeVore said. The same opportunities exist for undergraduate students who would like to do research projects, she added.

The grant will allow the students to study in the field and to present their research at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting or Paleobotanical Section of Botanical Society of America, she said. The project will also provide opportunities to incorporate information about paleobontany into courses, such as introductory environmental science and community ecology, and to offer public lectures in museums, exhibits, and activities for kindergarten through 12th-grade children through the Academic Outreach Program.

"Paleobotany is having a resurgence, thanks to the current use of fossil plant information to determine relationships of living plants," DeVore said. "Since plants interact more intimately with climate than animals, information about fossil plants provide great insights to how present vegetation may respond to climate change."

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