Biological Sciences Blog

Tag: Ecology

Amy Marcarelli: Distinguished Teaching & MASU Distinguished Professor of the Year Nominee

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Amy Marcarelli
Amy Marcarelli

Congratulations to Amy Marcarelli! She is one of the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Award winners. She also is a nominee for the 2023 University’s MASU Distinguished Professor of the Year.

Amy is an ecosystem ecologist with interests in energy and biogeochemical cycles in freshwaters. Her research program blends basic and applied research and integrates across aquatic habitats, including stream, river, wetland, lake littoral zones, and the nearshore regions of the Great Lakes. Marcarelli’s past and future research trajectory is governed by an interest in understanding the role of small, poorly quantified fluxes or perturbations on ecosystem processes and in linking those ecosystem processes to the underlying structure of microbial, algal, macrophyte and animal communities.

Since 1982, a Michigan Tech Distinguished Teaching Award has been presented annually in each of two categories: Associate Professor/Professor and Assistant Teaching Professor/Associate Teaching Professor/Teaching Professor/Professor of Practice/Assistant Professor. The award nomination and review processes have always been student-driven; an explicit student nomination process was discontinued in 1999 when it was determined that too few students were participating to identify the best candidates.

Since 1999, a group of five finalists in each of the two categories is selected based on student ratings of instruction completed during a calendar year. All instructional personnel who received at least 35 student ratings during spring and fall semesters within that calendar year are eligible except for those who are previous winners, department chairs, teaching assistants, temporary hires, etc. Eligible faculty are ranked by their cumulative average of the 7-Dimensions on the survey for the given year. The top 5 in each category are selected as finalists.

The Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year award recognizes the outstanding contributions and dedication exhibited by the faculty from Michigan’s 15 public universities to the education of undergraduate students. Each university was invited to nominate a faculty member who has had a significant impact on undergraduate student learning through various activities, particularly classroom instruction, applied research, experiential learning, innovation and mentoring.

Biological Sciences Department Award Winners holding their awards
Biological Sciences Department Award Winners

About the Biological Sciences Department

Biological scientists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues: improving healthcare, conserving biodiversity, advancing agriculture, and unlocking the secrets of evolution and genetics. The Biological Sciences Department offers seven undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your biology skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.

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Amy Marcarelli Receives the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Award

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Amy Marcarelli
Amy Marcarelli

Amy Marcarelli, a professor in Biological Sciences, has received the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Award in the category of Associate Professor/Professor. Dr. Marcarelli is an ecosystem ecologist with an interest in energy and biogeochemical cycles in freshwaters. Her research program blends basic and applied research and integrates across aquatic habitats including stream, river, wetland, lake littoral zones, and the nearshore regions of the Great Lakes.

“That’s fantastic news. Amy is not just passionate about educating the next generation of students but also very kind to her students and creative with her courses. We greatly appreciate her dedication and contributions to the teaching mission of Michigan Tech,” Chandrashekhar Joshi, the Department Chair of Biological Sciences, said.

Dr. Marcarelli said, “Thank you to all of my colleagues in the Biology Department for creating a community where teaching is valued, where we learn from and support each other in our teaching journeys, and where student success is the top priority in and out of the classroom.  I believe that community is why we have had such success in this award, with many more who have been nominated (and with awards in their futures, I’m sure!).  I am inspired by you, and grateful to have you as colleagues and friends.”

Since 1982, a Michigan Tech Distinguished Teaching Award is presented annually in each of two categories: Associate Professor/Professor and Assistant Teaching Professor/Associate Teaching Professor/Teaching Professor/Professor of Practice/Assistant Professor.

Since 1999, a group of five finalists in each of the two categories is selected based on student ratings of instruction completed during a calendar year. All instructional personnel who received at least 35 student ratings during spring and fall semesters within that calendar year are eligible except for those who are previous winners, department chairs, teaching assistants, temporary hires, etc. Eligible faculty are ranked by their cumulative average of the 7-Dimensions on the survey for the given year. The top 5 in each category are selected as finalists.

On behalf of the students, staff, and faculty in the Biological Sciences department, we congratulate Dr. Marcarelli for winning the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Award. It is a terrific achievement. We thank you for your excellent contributions to Michigan Tech’s critically important teaching mission.

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Biological Sciences in the Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

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Thank you to all of the Biological Sciences students that presented and shared their research at the 2023 Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium!

Overall Awards

First Place – Leah Harazin and Nathan Ostlund: “Stability of Terephthalate Degrading Microbial Consortia for Plastic Upcycling”

Second Place – Haley Marchese: “Sympathetic Activity to the Heart is Increased in a Mouse Model of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy”

Third Place – Grace Gonzalez: “The Gut Microbiome of Fish and Its Relevance to Antimicrobial Resistance”

Special awards for research affiliated with the Great Lakes Research Center

First Place — Leah Harazin and Nathan Ostlund: “Stability of Terephthalate Degrading Microbial Consortia for Plastic Upcycling”

Second Place — Grace Gonzalez: “The Gut Microbiome of Fish and Its Relevance to Antimicrobial Resistance”

Third Place — Tessa Tormoen: “Using DNA Metabarcoding to Evaluate Dietary Resource Partitioning Between Two Sympatric Tilefish”

Congratulations to all participants!

Tessa Tormoen

Haley Marchese

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Amy Marcarelli Receives NSF Grant to Explore How Microbes Process Organic Matter in Streams

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Professor Amy Marcarelli and a multi-disciplinary team have received a two-year, $300,000 NSF grant. The grant from the National Science Foundation is to study the relationships between organic matter and micro-organisms in streams. 

Marcarelli and colleague in stream with five gallon bucket collecting a water sample
Marcarelli and colleague collecting water samples

An ecosystems ecologist, Marcarelli is leading a team of Michigan Tech ecosystem scientists, microbiologists, environmental chemists, and data scientists. The researchers are conducting detailed laboratory experiments to gather data on how microbial communities work together to process complex mixtures of dissolved organic matter in streams.  Steve Techtmann, associate professor of Biological Sciences and an environmental microbiologist, is doing all the microbial work on the project in his lab at Michigan Tech. 

Dissolved organic matter comprises many different kinds of molecules that come from terrestrial and aquatic plants and microbes.  The researchers expect different microbes that live in streams to be specialized to break down these different molecules. 

“We expect the relationships to be extremely complicated,” Marcarelli says. 

They are looking at rates of respiration, carbon breakdown, and energy release. They hope to discover how the characteristics of dissolved organic matter and stream microbes can explain rates of carbon dioxide emission from streams. 

The researchers will use the data to develop machine-learning models. “The relationships between the organic matter and micro-organisms might not be evident in simpler analysis methods,” Marcarelli explains. 

The current work is the start of a much larger project. “We hope to build on the results of this project with a much bigger proposal for a large field project,” she says. 

And why is this work important?  “Although we, as a field, have studied carbon dioxide production and emission across many different streams, we can only predict a small amount of the variation we see based on environmental characteristics like temperature,” Marcarelli explains. “We think there is an important role of both microbes and organic matter structure that contributes to this variability, and understanding that is important for predicting these emissions in the future and response to global changes like climate and land use change.”

Marcarelli is the director of the Ecosystem Science Center at Michigan Tech.

This blog post initially appeared in the Fall 2022 Biological Sciences Newsletter. Read this article and others like it today.

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