2001 Education Award in Neuroscience

Drs. Edwin J. Furshpan, Edward A. Kravitz, and David D. Potter 

The 2001 ANDP Education Award was given to Drs. Edwin Furshpan, Edward Kravitz, and David Potter. These three Professors from Harvard Medical School's Department of Neurobiology have made innovative contributions to teaching and mentoring that have continued throughout their careers. While they have in common their career-long participation in the founding and development under the leadership of Stephen Kuffler of the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard (one of the first in the country, if not the first), they are clearly very different individuals-in style and in substance. Their contributions have included attention to mentoring activities and a passionate involvement in the development of some of the earliest programs fostering minority participation in neuroscience (and science) education, innovations in curriculum development at the level of graduate education of research students and medical students, and more recently, a focus on developing materials suitable for encouraging an interest in science at the level of secondary and primary education. While any one of these might have been the focus for honoring them, the spectrum of activities and a career-long dedication to education and encouragement of an interest and excitement in science have been dramatic features of their participation.

Edwin Furshpan is the Robert Henry Pfeiffer Professor of Neurobiology (emeritus) at Harvard and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of the Harvey Society. In 2001 he received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the California Institute of Technology. He was a co-director of the Neuroscience course for medical students at HMS from 1962-84 and chaired a committee to develop the neuroscience module of the "New Pathway Curriculum" for medical students, which featured a case-based method of teaching. Starting in the early 1980's, with the support of NSF and then NASA, he and David Potter extended the successful case-based approach to development of teaching exercises for high school and middle school students, recognizing that this could make the subject directly relevant to their lives and engage them in science in a more personal way. These activities were particularly directed toward schools with substantial minority enrollment. Part of the program included teacher training as well. As a further extension of the case-based neuroscience program, these materials were extended to topics of broader interest in biology. Beginning in the late 1960's following the assassination of Martin Luther King, and continuing throughout this period Drs. Furshpan, Kravitz, and Potter took an active and aggressive role in altering the poor representation of minorities at Harvard by insisting on recruitment goals, and leading further efforts to reach out to secondary level minority students and to institute the minority mentoring that is necessary to allow them to succeed in an unfamiliar environment. These activities involved summer programs for minority undergraduates, recruiting trips, and development of programs in collaboration with historically black institutions.

Edward A. Kravitz is the George Packer Berry Professor of Neurobiology at HMS and also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is very proud of his "Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring" award from HMS in 1998. He was a co-founder of the Neurobiology of Disease Teaching Workshops at the SFN as well as a participant in the Neurobiology of Disease and ethics courses for graduate students at HMS and was a director of the Neurobiology Course at MBL. He participates in activities directed toward education of minorities in sciences and medicine, and has worked in this capacity at Harvard, MBL, and the City College of New York (his alma mater), and has worked in programs for high school students at the Society for Neuroscience, at Harvard Medical School, and at the University of Puerto Rico.

David Potter is Robert Winthrop Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard (emeritus) and arrived at Harvard Neurobiology after postdoctoral fellowships with the great and famous pioneers of modern neurobiology, Sir Bernard Katz and Stephen Kuffler. He also participated in the Human Nervous System and Behavior Course for medical students, taught at MBL, and was a key player, in fact Chairman, of the HMS Committee on Disadvantaged Students in 1968-69. In promoting diversity at Harvard and elsewhere, he served as a member of the joint committee on the Status of Women at Harvard, and was a mentor or advisor for the HMS Minority Pre-matriculation Research program, and the neuroscience programs at Meharry Medical School and at Morehouse Medical School. Since 1997, he has been a lecturer and fieldwork supervisor in a course entitled "Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building", taught at the Kennedy School of Government, and he has consulted at the Pine Ridge and Navajo Reservations. He is active in areas of minority education, training and professional advancement at the Society for Neuroscience (Chair of the Committee) and has participated in ANDP efforts in this direction over the years.

Many of these innovative programs are the foundation of our current attempts to increase minority participation in science and health-related activities, to increase science literacy at all levels, and to develop ways of communicating the excitement and content of science to learners at all levels of participation in the educational system-from kindergarten through graduate research training to the lay public.

This all sounds very serious, but these are 3 light-hearted and very funny guys. Part of their mentoring success is most certainly due to that humor and to the warmth and inclusiveness they extend to everyone who wanders into their circle. A clear reflection of their success is the preponderant representation of their medical and graduate students in neurology and neuroscience research today.