Thomas M. Terry
e-mail: terry@uconnvm.uconn.edu
a brief biographical sketch
I fell in love with science as a teenager, after reading "One, Two, Three ... Infinity", by George Gamow. I was fascinated with the "secrets of the Universe" and wanted to know what was inside atoms and why the Universe had a beginning. I majored in physics, and it took me four years to discover that my mind didn't adapt well to the abstract mathematics needed to work with higher physics.I went home for Christmas break in my senior year without much of a clue as to what I was going to do after college. During that vacation, I met a first-year graduate student at Rockefeller University, studying cell biology. She spent much of that vacation telling me about cells, DNA, and the miracle of embryological development. I'd never taken a biology course, and decided to try out the introductory course in my last semester. Within weeks I was hooked, and decided to abandon physics and get into biology. But how?
Fortunately, I knew the chairman of Yale's Biophysics Department. He persuaded me to apply, and I became a graduate student. Those were wonderful years, gorging myself on biology courses, laboratory projects in virology and microbiology. I worked especially on Mycoplasmas, a group of bacteria that lack cell walls, and wrote a thesis on the ability of cell membranes to reassociate into membranes after being dissolved by detergents.
I spent a postdoctoral year in Geneva, Switzerland, working with bacteriophages, them moved briefly to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for two years, and then to UConn where I've been ever since. My research focused on membrane structure and function, and on viruses and their effects on modifying cell membranes.
I was assigned to teach introductory biology at UConn early on, and quickly came to love working with students just beginning their study of biology. I've been teaching introductory courses for over 25 years now, and still find them challenging and rewarding (but I wish they weren't so big!). I also teach microbiology, my favorite course of all because the lab is so much fun.
I've been working intensively with computers for over a decade, and have put a lot of time and energy into exploring educational uses of the Web. I think the internet will prove to be a revolutionary tool as important as the printing press, and am interested in exploring and developing educational uses of the internet. I have presented numerous talks and workshops at national or regional conferences, as well as workshops on Web-based teaching. In 2000 I was invited to Australia as an invited presenter at the Australian Society for Microbiology. In 2001 I was a keynote speaker at the Chilean Congress of Microbiology.
I've received several teaching awards, including appointment as a University Teaching Fellow (1994), Chancellor's award in Information Technology (1998), Connecticut Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of College Teaching (1998), and Teacher Innovation Award in Higher Education for the development and application of technology-based innovations in learning. Sponsored by the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (2001).
I am actively involved with the American Society for Microbiology. I have worked on a number of ASM committees, chaired an undergraduate education conference for ASM, and chaired a committe responsible for developing peer-reviewed undergraduate curriculum activities.
Thomas M. Terry, Ph. D.
Department of Molecular & Cell Biology
University of Connecticut U-3044
Storrs, CT 06268