Professor of Biology Dan Guthrie Selected AAAS Fellow

It has been a year of honors for Dan Guthrie, professor of biology in the Joint Science Department, who will be elected a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Earlier this semester, Professor Guthrie's 40th anniversary with the College was commemorated at the 2004 convocation ceremonies, where he was described by President Pamela Gann as "mentor, friend, and leader" to countless students and colleagues.
Guthrie will be inducted in February 2005 during the 100-year-old association's annual meeting early next year in Washington, D.C., for his "distinguished contributions to the Southern California Academy of Sciences (SCAS); as the Academy's treasurer; editor of The Bulletin; annual meeting coordinator and Webmaster; and for invaluable work with the Research Training Program of the Junior Academy."
"It's nice to have my work for SCAS recognized, but I'm also proud of the work we've done vis-?-vis the Research Training Program of the Junior Academy," Guthrie says. "The program places well-qualified high school students in the laboratories of college, university, and laboratory scientists, who act as mentors and involve the students in research. Students write reports, give oral presentations at the annual SCAS meeting, and the best go to the national AAAS meeting to present their work."
In addition to his work with the AAAS, Guthrie has varied research interests of his own that he avidly pursues. "I'm interested in how human beings interact with their environmentspecifically, how humans affected the fauna of California upon their arrival, especially that of the Channel Islands," he says. "I am also interested in faunal changes, particularly birds, through the Pleistocene glaciations"
Guthrie's area of research interesthuman interaction with the environmentonce got a practical application that no one could have imagined, as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska. Some of the animals that died from ingesting the pollutants were shipped back to Joint Science for research, at Guthrie's request.
The Joint Science Department provides more than 50 different science courses for students at CMC, Pitzer, and Scripps. The department, housed in the W. M. Keck Science Center, continues to provide state-of-the-art facilities and a flexible curricula to students in applied biology, biology-chemistry, economics and engineering, environmental science, management engineering, neuroscience, science and management and EEP (environment, economics, and politics).