Spotlight on Dr. Wayne Jones | From Harvard to Harpur | Harpur Professor Studies Infant Exposure to Alcohol | Marella Feltrin-Morris Brings an International Flair to Education | Welcome New Faculty | Share A Memory | Shop Harpur Online | Back Issues

Five Harpur College faculty recently won SUNY’s coveted Chancellor’s Awards which are given for superb teaching, extraordinary service to students, active scholarship, and adherence to the highest academic standards. The winners are Timothy Lowenstein, professor of geology, Rosmarie Morewedge, associate professor and chair of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages, Steven Dickman, professor of geology, Ricardo Laremont, assistant professor of political science, and Wayne Jones, associate professor of chemistry. The Harpur Hotline will spotlight each winner in the next few issues. Congratulations, Dr. Wayne Jones, 2001 Chancellor's Award Winner Dr. Wayne Jones has the zeal of someone who truly loves his work. When he talks about his career, his eyes light up and he smiles broadly. He is the type of professor every college student deserves: thrilled to teach, delighted by his students’ curiosity, and eager to contribute to his field. Jones began teaching at Harpur College in 1993. "It doesn’t feel like that long," he says, "I still feel like the new kid on the block." Jones is co-director of Binghamton University’s Center for Learning and Technology (CLT). He is a pioneer in chemistry education, having collaborated with Dr. James Dix and the CLT on H.M. Chem 2.0, a CD Rom that uses text, video and animation to create a general chemistry learning environment. (Follow the link for a demo of the software.) His love for teaching is obvious. "Teaching is energizing!" said Jones. He feels an adrenaline rush after lectures and loves when students ask questions. "Students’ questions make you rethink your own thinking." He is equally enthralled with research, enjoying the opportunity to ask questions. "The real exciting stuff is what you can't read in books." Supported by the National Institutes of Health, Jones is currently researching electron and energy transfer processes in extended molecular systems, such as polymers for chemical sensor applications. Several local industries, the Integrated Electronics Engineering Center (IEEC), and the Department of Defense are supporting his research in conducting polymers for electronics packaging. Jones is extremely proud of Harpur College’s chemistry department, partly because so many undergraduates are engaged in research. They work closely with faculty and graduate students in the laboratory and even co-author scholarly papers. "It’s absolutely essential that undergrads are included in all aspects of scholarly research," he stressed. The department’s strong endorsement of undergraduate research has helped launch several academic careers among Harpur’s alumni. A native of Vermont, Jones received a Bachelor of Science at St. Michael’s College and received a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to Harpur College, Jones completed postdoctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin. In his spare time, he enjoys basketball, golf, working with computers, and spending time with his family. Jones described receiving the Chancellor’s Award as humbling. "I think there are a lot of wonderful educational innovations happening on campus. Because of those, I’ve been able to have an impact." TOP From Harvard to Harpur: An Interview with Dr. Mark Lenzenweger Dr. Mark Lenzenweger This fall, Harpur College’s Psychology department will gain an internationally recognized scholar and researcher in the area of experimental psychopathology. Dr. Mark Lenzenweger, formerly of Harvard, is one of the best psychopathology researchers in the world. Lenzenweger received a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Cornell University and a Master’s and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Yeshiva University. He was clinically trained at Cornell Medical Center, Yeshiva University’s Psychological Services Clinic, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has received several NIH grants and is one of the lead investigators in a multi-million project funded by the Swiss Foundation for Personality Disorders Research. Lenzenweger has edited four books and published over 50 papers in refereed journals. Harpur College is pleased to introduce one of its new rising stars. What made you decide to come to Harpur College? I decided to leave Harvard to come to Binghamton University for four important reasons. First and foremost, the Department of Psychology at Binghamton has an excellent reputation for training first-rate psychologists in clinical psychological science, which is my general professional area. Moreover, during my visit to Binghamton and in all subsequent contact I have been very impressed by the warmth and collegiality of the faculty and administration at Binghamton.  My new position at Binghamton University is especially appealing and unique -- it is an "interarea professorship" in which I will be appointed with a home base in clinical science but jointly appointed in behavioral neuroscience as well as cognition/perception, which are also areas in the Department of Psychology. For me such an appointment gives me the flexibility and support to do my research in the most fruitful and exciting way. Secondly, although life in Cambridge and Boston has been wonderful in many respects, both my wife and I were hoping to return to life in Upstate New York to raise our children there. We think the quality of life in Upstate New York is just the best in terms of community, green space, and simple living. Thirdly, the students at Binghamton at both the undergraduate and graduate levels are outstanding and that is extremely important to me. I value teaching a great deal and I am looking forward to working with Binghamton students, both in the classroom and in my laboratory. Fourth, I feel very much intellectually "at home" in a College of Arts and Sciences. I very much enjoy the intellectual excitement and vitality that exists in the academy.  It has been delightful to be a member of the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and I look forward to the same at Binghamton. Describe your current area of research. My research falls in the area known as "experimental psychopathology." I currently maintain two programs of experimental psychopathology research: a). the nature and pathogenesis of schizophrenia and b). the longitudinal study of personality disorders, personality, and temperament. In my work on schizophrenia, I am primarily focused on laboratory studies designed to clarify the structure of the liability of schizophrenia (i.e., schizotypy). Current studies in this area are probing sustained attention, working memory, eye movement dysfunction, and other features in a series of 13 year follow-up studies of schizotypic individuals. In my work on personality disorders, I am continuing a large-scale NIMH-sponsored study of the development of personality disorders and their relations to normal personality and temperament across the lifespan. My other interests include psychometric theory, neurobiological bases of personality and psychopathology, behavioral genetics, diagnosis and classification, and taxometric analysis. I also maintain a small clinical psychotherapy practice. Why did you choose a career in Psychology? I had the good fortune of being exposed to a number of highly energetic and generative psychologists when I was an undergraduate psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. These people engendered enthusiasm not only for research in psychological science, but they also served as role models for careers that integrated basic science with a concern for mental health.  What are your hobbies and interests? I love to spend time with my family, doing things like camping, biking, hiking, and exploring nature. I also enjoy old bookstores, folk music, and long walks with good friends. TOP

Harpur College Professor Studies Infant Exposure to Alcohol

by Marty Doorey

The remembered associations surrounding an infant’s first meal – smells, sounds and taste – are so deeply embedded and powerful they can last a lifetime.

For more than 30 years Norman Spear and his colleagues have been attempting to figure out how learning and memory develop for infants and whether early memories of alcohol exposure might contribute to later abuse of alcohol.

The work by Spear, distinguished professor of psychology in Harpur College; colleagues Evgeniy Petrov and Elena Varlinskaya, both physicians and research professors at BU, and Juan Carlos Molina of the Institute Ferreyra in Argentina, may help unlock the secrets of alcohol dependency. The research has been funded for more than 30 years by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Mental Health. Current NIH grants to Spear exceed $2.5 million.

Working with rat pups, some only hours old, Spear and his colleagues have discovered that even at its first meal, the newborn’s behavior can be influenced by olfactory and taste cues. The next question is how well the rats remember those lessons as they mature.

Spear says that Sigmund Freud had it wrong when he postulated that adults could not remember things learned as infants – he termed it "infantile amnesia" – because those events were associated with socially undesirable events.

"Freud was wrong about it," Spear says. "It was not a social problem. All altricial mammals (those born with very immature brains) forget the events of their infancy more completely than later events, and with animals it is unlikely that social standards are involved."

However, Spear is finding that the memory for things learned in conjunction with the infant’s first meal may not be forgotten as rapidly as other events of infancy. "Things learned then seem to be special," he says.

Spear and colleagues have tested their theory on hours-old rats that were delivered by cesarean section. The rat pups were given a drop or two of milk, preceded by a sniff of lemon oil. "That gives the odor a lot of power," says Spear.

Later, when presented with a dry nipple after a lemon-scented cotton swab, the rats suckled for about 80 percent of a 10-minute period. Rat pups in control groups not exposed to the lemon-milk pairing suckled only about 20 percent of the time.

Spear’s team repeated the lemon-milk pairing with another group of rat pups, but this time allowed a minute to lapse between the presentation of the lemon scent and the milk. In spite of the time lapse – which in older infants would not result in a conditioned pairing – the rat pups became conditioned to suckle in response to the lemon scent.

Spear concludes that the conditioning in the newborn might be especially robust for at least two reasons. First, in natural circumstances an odor and a nipple are the cues that direct rat pups to their first meal so newborn rats might be predisposed to learn the odor-nipple association. Or, Spear says, it could be that the pups are blank sensory slates – aside from their fetal experience – and the first significant sensory information they encounter,the lemon odor and the milk taste, forms a special bond due to its primacy.

In either event, the experiment demonstrates that even primitive events, such as suckling at a newborn’s first meal, are learned and offer clues as to how the mechanics of memory and reinforcement operate.

Spear is working on a concurrent series of experiments with rat pups and ethanol, the form of alcohol that is the basic ingredient in commercial alcoholic beverages.

"What we’re working on now is the question, ‘Is alcohol rewarding to infant rats and fetuses?’ " In particular, he is asking how early exposure to alcohol, both prenatally and postnatally, affects later responsiveness to alcohol, including alcohol abuse.

The first challenge in the postnatal-exposure experiments is to get the rat pups to drink alcohol. Spear notes that older rats don’t like alcohol. ("You have to trick them into it," he said,) Then he charts the physiological and conditioned learning effects under various conditions when alcohol is the reward for learning.

"What we’re finding is that, within the first two weeks after birth, infants readily drink more alcohol," he says. "They consume two to three times more alcohol than water. What we’re able to show is that alcohol is rewarding, and at some concentrations it’s as rewarding as milk."

The second form of exposure that rat pups get to alcohol is via the mother during gestation or nursing. The alcohol gets into the amniotic fluid and the fetus is exposed directly to both the flavor of alcohol and alcohol’s pharmacological "buzz." Nursing rat pups may also be exposed to alcohol-contaminated milk.

While Spear’s work is with rats, the implications extend to humans. For instance, the research involving rat fetuses that absorb alcohol via an intoxicated mother may have implications for understanding Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the less extreme Fetal Alcohol Effect, two conditions that affect children born to alcoholic mothers. Spear notes that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome was only definitively identified and labeled as such less than 30 years ago, so research into the underlying issues of alcohol and fetus-infant development is still in its infancy.

Scientists have judged that more cases of mental retardation are due to prenatal exposure to alcohol than to any other single cause. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome generally affects one of every 1,000 newborns and two per 1,000 births in some socioeconomic groups. Fetal Alcohol Effect, which has milder symptoms, is far more prevalent. Because of structural and neurochemical changes in the brain caused by the prenatal ingestion of alcohol, these children have learning and behavioral difficulties that hamper them their entire lives. In many instances these children also have a high predisposition toward alcoholism in later life.

Along with the basic research regarding alcohol, Spear is advancing science’s understanding of the role of prenatal learning, the importance of senses in learning and the link between the senses, memory and learning.

Spear, who came to Binghamton in 1974, received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and another in psychology from Bowling Green State University. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in experimental psychology from Northwestern University. Prior to teaching at Binghamton, Spear served on the faculty of Rutgers University, one of the nation’s premier schools for alcohol studies.

Earlier this year, Spear was awarded the Howard Crosby Warren Medal for 2001 from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, a division of the American Psychological Association.

Spear received the award at the Society’s annual meeting at Princeton University earlier this year. The medal was established in 1935 and is given annually for distinguished scholarship in the field of experimental psychology.

Spear’s research focuses on animal and human memory and learning, and the effects of alcohol and other drugs on them. Peter Killeen, secretary-treasurer of the experimental psychologist’s group, recently described Spear in the June 2001 Experimental Psychology Bulletin as, "one of the leading experts on the ontogeny of learning and memory."

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Marella Feltrin-Morris Brings an International Flair to Education

At Harpur College, students have the advantage of learning foreign languages from native speakers, one of which is Marella Feltrin-Morris, adjunct lecturer of Romance Languages. Native speakers pass along better pronunciation and inflection to students. "They can think more quickly and it's easier to improvise," explains this native of Treviso, Italy, who is scheduled to teach three Italian courses this fall.

Having a few years of American life under her belt makes it easier for Feltrin-Morris to anticipate her students' difficulties with Italian. Anthony Pellegrini, professor emeritus of Romance Languages, agrees. "The teacher can understand the American English speaking person making mistakes after-the-fact," he said. "She might anticipate by explaining that in English you use the verb 'I am' but in Romance languages, you say, 'I have' in certain idioms."

Feltrin-Morris stresses that nonnative speakers also make wonderful teachers. "They have been in the same positions as their students learning a foreign language, and often made the same mistakes as they do. So, in a way, they are more familiar with the learning process and can anticipate problems better than a native speaker."

In 1995, Feltrin-Morris received the Italian equivalent of a Bachelor's, a Laurea, in American Literature from Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. She went on to receive from B.U. an M.A. in Comparative Literature in 1998 and an M.A. in Italian in 1999. Although she hopes to eventually move back to Europe, Feltrin-Morris feels American higher education has many advantages over its European counterparts. Students get more personal attention from faculty; now that she's on the other side of the podium, she enjoys getting to know her students. Feltrin-Morris also feels research is easier. "Libraries in the states are much better," she explained. "Texts are more available. Most of the time you can't borrow books from university libraries in Italy. It depends from one library to the other. If you can, you can only keep the books for a very short time and you canÕt borrow as many."

In addition to teaching, Feltrin-Morris is working towards a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at B.U. and does freelance translation. She and her husband, Jon Morris, an instructor at Elmira College, have recently translated an Italian book "Heidegger and the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the West" (Prometheus Books, 2001) by Domenico Losurdo.

Feltrin-Morris enjoys Harpur College, but is homesick for the old country, keeping in touch by phone and mail. ("My mom sends me crossword puzzles every two weeks from Italy.") She'd like to move back to Europe eventually, though not necessarily Italy. "I like living abroad, I just don't like to stay in the same place for too long."

Harpur College Welcomes New Faculty

A bumper crop of new faculty has joined Harpur College, keeping with our founders' vision of emphasizing both scholarship and research. To fill growing departments and attritional vacancies, Harpur College has hired over fifty of the best and brightest that academia has to offer. We are pleased to introduce them. Stay tuned to future issues of the Harpur Hotline to get to know our new professors better.

Because Harpur College Dean Mileur has funneled more resources into departments, they've had greater freedom to offer tenure-track positions to visiting faculty. These individuals have been promoted:

Congratulations to all faculty for your appointments! We wish you a long and prosperous career at Harpur College.

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Share A Memory On-Line

Be sure to visit the Harpur College Memory Book - and leave your mark. Share a favorite memory of your Harpur experience, whether as a student or as a faculty or staff member. Or, maybe you just want to wish Harpur a Happy Anniversary. Memories will be listed and updated on a regular basis. Put those thinking caps on and tell us about your favorite Harpur moment.

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