When the Meg Mathies Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory and the Robert P. Pinnell Chemistry Laboratory were dedicated in February, students got more than state-of-the-art facilities. Housed in the W.M. Keck Science Center, the labs represent a continuum approach to science education at CMC, Pitzer College, and Scripps College, as well as the enduring legacies of two professors.

Biology professor Margaret Mathies and chemistry professor Robert Pinnell spent 37 and 36 years, respectively, at The Claremont Colleges, Mathies studying molecular and cellular aspects of the immune response and Pinnell teaching organic chemistry from the perspective of an inorganic chemist. Over the years they helped change the shape of science education through the Joint Science department, an intercollegiate arrangement allowing each college to provide greater science opportunities than any could offer alone. While each of the schools has a distinctive curricular emphasis, through Joint Science they cooperate in offering more than 50 difference science courses and a flexible curricula, with interdisciplinary majors in applied biology, biology-chemistry, economics and engineering, environmental science, management engineering, neuroscience, science and management, and EEP (environment, economics, and politics).

"There's a whole different atmosphere here than in a major university science department," says Sam Tanenbaum P'86, acting associate dean of Joint Science and an engineering professor at Harvey Mudd College. "And the quality of instruction is very different. People are attracted to teach here because they know teaching is valued."

The Joint Science program is not new—in fact, as Tanenbaum suggests, it was one of the things that drew Professor Pinnell to Claremont-but the program's emphasis on critical thinking and high-quality undergraduate education has a new energy, thanks not only to the physical expansion, but also to an administrative initiative allowing a new generation of teacher-scholars to join the team.

In 2002, CMC completed a two-year strategic planning process involving more than 130 participants, including trustees, students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni, that examined every facet of the College. That introspection inspired a separate strategic plan for Joint Science, as a roadmap through 2014.

Over the last 12 years, the size of the Joint Science faculty has doubled, and increased funding has nurtured an influx of young, inspired faculty members, says David Sadava, the Pritzker Family Foundation Professor of Biology. Among the newest faculty members: Jennifer Armstrong and Scott Williams. Armstrong earned a doctorate in biology from the University of California, San Diego, and is a graduate of New Mexico State University. A molecular cell biologist, she is conducting fruit fly research on cell differentiation, described by Sadava as the "frontier of modern biology." Williams, a 1995 Harvey Mudd alumnus, returns to Claremont as an assistant professor of chemistry. He earned a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the University of Washington, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, researching the thermodynamics and mechanisms of polar substituted alkenes.

Several new colleagues will join them in the fall, with searches underway for an ecologist and associate dean, as well as the five-college William R. Kenan Chair in Computational Neuroscience. This intensely interdisciplinary field examines the relationship between the activity of individual neurons and the brain itself, with implications in psychology, philosophy, and biology, and applications to brain trauma recovery, learning and memory, manic depression, and Alzheimer's.

"It is incredibly exciting to have this new stimulation and this new enthusiasm in the department," Sadava says. Both he and Jodi Olson, director of the department's pre-health advising, say student involvement in faculty research only deepens the learning.

"When our students apply to medical schools and graduate programs," says Olson, "they've had ready access to lab equipment that most students don't touch until grad school, and they've been given the leeway to design and run their own studies. They didn't just wash beakers."

This increased attention to the department—from the buildings to the faculty-has resulted in more students heading to medical school. Two years ago, 74 percent of the CMC, Pitzer, and Scripps students who applied to medical school were accepted; in 2003, that number rose to 77 percent.

"At Joint Science, we're never the ones to say, 'You can't go to med school,'" explains Olson. "I'm here to answer the phone when a med school or graduate school calls, to explain what getting a 'B' in organic chemistry at Joint Science really means."

The measure of a department at a school like CMC, of course, isn't medical school acceptance rates alone, and the new teacher-scholars will continue to encourage innovative thinking and foster leadership skills for their own sake, according to Tanenbaum.

"We hope that the many CMC students who become leaders in industry and government will understand that it's critically important today to be knowledgeable about science and health issues," he says. "CMC produces graduates who will become well-versed policymakers, people who understand the science, not just the issues."

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Margaret Mathies

Robert Pinnell