CONWAY, Ark. (September 8, 2014) – Eighteen Hendrix students who documented the fungi that live on campus will see their results published in the 2015 volume of the Journal of the
Arkansas Academy of Science.
The students were enrolled in Biology of Algae and Fungi, taught by Hendrix biology professor Dr. Ann Willyard, who was notified that the students’ manuscript “Sampling local fungal diversity in an undergraduate laboratory using DNA barcoding” was accepted
for the peer-reviewed publication.
Students chose classmates Alison Harrington ’14 and Adam Bigott ’14 to coordinate the student authors as they wrote the paper. Natalie Skinner ’15 and Michael Ottenlips ’14 were elected to present the combined results at the Arkansas Academy of Science
conference in Searcy, Ark. this spring.
“The process (and achievement) of publishing a research paper will help all of these students in the development of their scientific careers” said Willyard.
Harrington, who intends to be a fungal biologist, is currently traveling to study fungi with support from a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Bigott was accepted into the graduate school in the Plant Pathology Department at Louisiana State University.
Ben Anderson ‘16, Madison Boone ‘14, Marc Brick ‘14, Jill delSol ‘14, Charles Hotchkiss ‘15, Reade Huddleston ‘14, Elizabeth Kasper ‘15, Julie McGrady ‘15, Michael McKinnie ‘15, Kevin Spatz ‘14, Aaron Steinberg ‘15, Florence van den Broek ‘15, Christina
Wilson ‘14, and Austin Wofford ‘15 collected data, wrote, edited, and revised the paper based on reviewer comments, Willyard said.
Willyard and biology professor Dr. Joyce Hardin plan to continue this work in future courses and to put the fungal photos online to help document fungal diversity in central Arkansas. This student research will also provide each of these students with
the scientific version of immortality: the paper itself, nine fungal herbarium specimens that will be permanently archived, and five nucleotide sequences in GenBank will be referenced by future researchers for decades.”
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the sixth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the country’s “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges by
U.S. News and World Report. Hendrix
is featured in the latest edition of Colleges That Change
Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, as well as the 2014 Princeton Review’s The
Best 378 Colleges, Forbes magazine's list of America's Top Colleges, and the 2014 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.