Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

A newsletter for faculty, staff and students

July-August 2004 • Vol. 30, No. 4

Wow! Students will do DNA fingerprinting in teaching lab

New students and those returning this fall will find a dramatic enhancement of Bumpers College teaching facilities with the addition of state-of-the-art technology and other improvements in two auditoriums, a biotechnology teaching lab with a high “Wow!” factor, a multi-purpose meeting/reception room and a renovated classroom.

Dr. Ken Korth, Plant Pathology, shows high school students attending a Gifted and Talented Institute summer camp how to do DNA fingerprinting using new equipment in the Plant Sciences teaching laboratory.

For the first time, students will be able to do DNA fingerprinting in the Plant Sciences 007 teaching laboratory. The lab will be equipped for PCR (polymerase chain reaction) procedures that students can execute to reveal the DNA coding in tissue from living things.

The lab will be named to acknowledge a gift of $50,000 from Noal and Joanna Lawhon of Sherwood in memory of Mr. Lawhon’s parents, Jay and Lillian Lawhon.

The Lawhon Classroom also will have 15 to 20 high-quality microscopes, including two research-grade microscopes, for viewing the internal structures of microorganisms. All of the microscopes provide magnification of 1,000 times.

Another major enhancement is the ability to project high-quality images from the microscopes onto a screen and save the images to a computer.

Two auditoriums in the AFLS Building and Human Environmental Sciences Buildings will have the latest technology to enhance curriculum, said Diana Bisbee, who manages renovation projects in the College’s Classrooms for Tomorrow initiative, which is part of the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century.

The new Sympodium® system will allow teachers to mark directly on images projected from the computer onto a screen, using a pad at the teaching podium. The auditoriums will include HITT® technology, which provides for instant feedback from the class to questions.

The AFLS and HESC auditoriums will have 151 and 120 seats, respectively. They will be named in recognition of gifts of $350,000 from H.L. Hembree III and his wife, Janelle, for the AFLS auditorium and $150,000 from Leland and Betty Tollett for the HESC auditorium.

The former living and dining rooms, HESC 108-109, are being remodeled as a multi-use space for seminars, meetings and receptions. Vintage parquet flooring revealed when carpet was taken up will be restored.

The HESC 106 classroom, which already has the SmartBoard® system for computer-aided instruction, is being completely refurbished and will be named to recognize a designated donation by Carroll and Sue Walls of Little Rock and their many years of support as friends of the College and the Division.