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COMMUNITY NEWS
College grants emeritus status
to two professors
Two retired faculty members were recently honored
with emeritus status.
Dr. Larry Brasher was named emeritus professor of
religion after 15 years of service. Dr. David Smith was
named emeritus professor of music after 31 years of
service.
The title of emeritus is awarded to faculty who have
attained the rank of professor or associate professor,
who have served the college for at least 10 years,
and who have made significant contributions in the
classroom, to their department, or to the college.
Future’s so Fulbright
Ford receives prestigious award
to teach abroad
Dr. Charlotte Ford, associate
professor of library science and
director of the BSC library, has
been selected for a prestigious
Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to
teach at the Francisco Morazán
National Pedagogical University
in Honduras this spring and
summer.
Ford will teach in the
university’s new master’s
program in library science and will participate in program
assessment and development activities.
Ford, who was born in Peru and grew up in Kentucky,
holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from
Earlham College as well as a master’s in library science and
a Ph.D. in library and information science from Indiana
University.
Professor’s research on sleep receives big boost—a $150,000 grant
Here’s a study it should be easy to
get student volunteers for. Assistant
Professor of Psychology Dr. Joe
Chandler ’03 has received a $150,000
federal grant to look at whether a form
of sugar helps sleep-deprived people
stay alert.
To conduct the experiment,
Chandler will keep about two dozen
student volunteers awake for 40 hours
in a new sleep lab that will be constructed in the Harbert
Building. The students—who are probably well accustomed
to studying while eating jellybeans and drinking Mountain
Dew—will take a series of tests before and after drinking
either a specific amount of glucose or a placebo.
Chandler received a three-year grant from the U.S. Navy
for the project; the funds come from the Naval Medical
Research Unit (NAMRU)-Dayton, via the Department
of Defense’s Joint Program Committee for biomedical
research. Before joining the BSC faculty, he was a researcher
for NAMRU; much of his work focuses on how food and
drink, including energy drinks and other sources, affect
sleep.
“Glucose is the brain’s primary fuel,” Chandler
said. “Neurons run on glucose, and when you’re doing
something that requires concentration or inhibition of
other functions, that burns a lot of fuel to run your pre-
frontal cortex.”
That means a sleep deficit makes it harder to regulate
emotions as the brain focuses its limited resources on more
critical tasks, leaving us grumpy or snappish when we’re
overtired. Earlier research has shown that replenishing
glucose improves self-control. Chandler plans to test how
10 to 15 grams of glucose—less sugar than a serving of
soda—helps performance on the kind of tasks that, say, a
sailor on watch might have to do while tired.
It’s a pretty low-risk test, Chandler said, and he expects
that it will show that drinking glucose helps a little, but not
for very long. He hopes to continue the research after this
project and to look more into college students’ myths and
misconceptions about sleep.
Smith
Brasher