Singer Earns Bessey Teaching Award From Botanical Society of America
Susan Singer, the Carleton College Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of the Natural Sciences, has won the Charles Edwin Bessey Teaching Award from the Botanical Society of America. The award honors Dr. Bessey, who is remembered as one of the great developers of botanical education in the United States of America. A professor and administrator at the University of Nebraska, his work and dedication to improving the educational aspects of botany are most noted in what Nebraskans call “The Bessey Era” (1886-1915), during which Nebraska developed an extraordinary program in botany and ranked among the top five schools in the United States for the number of its undergraduates who became famous botanists.
Northfield, Minn.––Susan Singer, the Carleton College Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of the Natural Sciences, has won the Charles Edwin Bessey Teaching Award from the Botanical Society of America.
Singer joined the department of biology at Carleton in 1986 and has pursued a career that integrates science and education. She has B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (N.Y.) and completed a teacher certification program in New York state. She has directed Carleton’s Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching and worked at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a program officer in Developmental Mechanisms. With her undergraduate research students, she studies the evolution, genetics, and development of flowering in legumes and also does research on genomics learning.
She received the American Society of Plant Biology’s Excellence in Teaching award in 2004 and was elected an AAAS fellow in 2009. Susan serves on the NSF Education and Human Resources Advisory Committee, American Society of Plant Biology Education Foundation board, and the board for the Center for Excellence in Education. In addition to having served on the National Academies’ Board on Science Education, she has contributed to the National Academies’ committee that authored America’s Lab Report (chair), the committee that authored Taking Science to School (science consultant), the committee on Promising Practices in STEM Undergraduate Education (chair), and the committee on Discipline Based Education Research (chair). Susan enjoys coaching the Northfield High School Science Olympiad team.
The award honors Dr. Bessey, who is remembered as one of the great developers of botanical education in the United States of America. In 1884, he accepted the professorship of botany and horticulture at the University of Nebraska. His work and dedication to improving the educational aspects of botany are most noted in what Nebraskans call “The Bessey Era” (1886-1915), during which Nebraska developed an extraordinary program in botany and ranked among the top five schools in the United States for the number of its undergraduates who became famous botanists. Dr. Bessey served as dean of the University of Nebraska Agricultural College and became head dean in 1909. He served as interim chancellor for the University 1888-91, 1899 and in 1899.
“I’m delighted to receive the Bessey Award,” Singer said. “It’s an honor to be recognized by a professional society that so fully embodies the integration of high quality research and education.”
The Botanical Society of America (BSA) is a “not-for-profit” membership society whose mission is to promote botany, the field of basic science dealing with the study and inquiry into the form, function, development, diversity, reproduction, evolution, and uses of plants and their interactions within the biosphere. To accomplish this mission, the objectives of The Society are to sustain and provide improved formal and informal education about plants; encourage basic plant research; provide expertise, direction, and position statements concerning plants and ecosystems; and foster communication within the professional botanical community, and between botanists and the rest of humankind through publications, meetings, and committees.