April 11, 2017

             

Drexel’s Department of History and Center for Science, Technology and Society (STS) hosted the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of Biology on March 24-25, 2017. The event was organized by Lloyd Ackert, associate teaching professor in the Department of History and affiliate faculty member with STS. Over 50 people participated in the event and represented U.S. universities including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Brown, Penn, Franklin & Marshall, Temple, Cornell and Johns Hopkins; and international institutions such as the University of Paris and University of Vienna.

One of the highlights of the conference was the series of tours at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANS). Rick McCourt, professor, Department of Biodiversity, Earth & Environmental Science and associate curator of botany, ANS, gave a general tour, taking participants behind the scenes to the mineralogical, entomological and botanical collections. Jordan Teisher, collection manager, Department of Botany, added a presentation of the Lewis and Clark materials. After the general tour, the group went on two additional tours of the Academy. Paul Callomon, MS in STS ’16, collection manager, provided a tour of the malacological collection, and Jennifer Vess, the Brooke Dolan Archivist, hosted a visit to the archives where participants examined works by Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Ruth Patrick and others.

On Saturday, graduate students presented original research, and here is where the true value of the JAS-Bio asserted itself—sharp scholarly criticism wrapped in collegiality and mentorship. Drexel student participants included Paul Callomon ’16 MS in STS, Ann Campbell MS in STS, and Jonathan Shoup, a dual degree BA in History and MS in STS student.

View the Seminar Program to see all Graduate Student Presentations (PDF)