Wise New Dean
Phyllis M. Wise, professor and chair of physiology at the University of Kentucky, succeeds Mark McNamee as dean of the Division of Biological Sciences.
Wise assumes her new post January 1, pending approval by the UC Board of Regents.
Wise has been chair of the University of Kentucky's Department of Physiology since 1993, when she was recruited from the University of Maryland's School of Medicine. She joined Maryland in 1976, after two years as an adjunct assistant professor and research associate at the University of New Mexico and two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
Leo Chalupa, faculty member in the Center for Neuroscience and Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, has been appointed acting dean to guide the division during the period between McNamee's departure and Wise's arrival.
Grads Leave CBS Well Prepared
Most recent UC Davis biological-sciences graduates are working in their chosen field or studying for a postgraduate degree-and they feel well prepared, according to a university survey.
The survey, conducted in the summer and fall of 2000, questioned June 1999 recipients of UC Davis undergraduate degrees, with a response rate of 46 percent from among the 2,388 who received the survey. Among those respondents were 242 biological sciences alumni.
One year after graduating, 48 percent of graduates who majored in biological sciences were employed full time, and 52 percent were studying for or had just completed a postgraduate degree or credential.
Fifteen percent were working part time by choice, and 31 percent were unemployed and not seeking work. Close to 2 percent were working part time but would have preferred full-time employment, and 4 percent were unemployed and looking for work.
Among those working full time, 72 percent had jobs in their chosen field.
More than three-quarters of graduates working full time reported that their studies prepared them well for their jobs. And 84 percent of those pursuing postgraduate studies gave their undergraduate education high marks.
About a fifth of the June 1999 graduating class was working or studying in the fields of biological and health sciences. The average annual salary for graduates working full time in those fields was $32,800. The average salary for all 1999 graduates was $38,700, up 27 percent from the average salary reported by 1996 graduates. Engineers reported the highest average salaries of $52,000 and clerical workers the lowest at $30,000.
For further findings, see "Survey of June 1999 Baccalaureate Degree Recipients: Educational and Occupational Outcomes" on the Student Affairs Research and Information Web site, http://www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu/downlist.html.
Medical Informatics Moves In
Medical informatics, a master's degree program created at UC Davis 2 ½ years ago, has moved its administrative home to become the Division of Biological Science's 12th graduate group.
Dick Walters, a computer science professor emeritus and the graduate group's founding chair, said the program could serve as a springboard to someday creating a graduate program in bioinformatics.
The medical informatics program was established within the School of Medicine in 1999 for doctors, veterinarians, nurses and other health care professionals interested in using information sciences to improve their practices.
Walters said informatics is growing increasingly important in a variety of areas of medicine, from medical diagnosis and treatment decision-making to managing patient records.
"What we are trying to do in this program is to train people who have health-professional backgrounds how to more efficiently use these tools," Walters said.
The program's first class graduated last June.
The graduate group was initially housed in the Department of Computer Science, where Walters had his principal faculty appointment. However, he said there was a need to find the program a more suitable, permanent home.
The Division of Biological Science's Graduate Group Complex now administers medical informatics. "The Graduate Group Complex is an ideal home, in that it helps build closer ties with CBS, has expertise in managing administrative details for such programs, and the staff is used to working with graduate groups that have no specific departmental affiliation," Walters said.
Walters said medical informatics has a strong overlap with bioinformatics, which bridges the life sciences with mathematics, statistics, computational and information sciences, and engineering.
Many of the medical informatics core courses could provide curriculum for a bioinformatics graduate program as well, he said. Walters hopes to expand the program to offer doctoral degrees in medical informatics. He said he also looks forward to the students in this program participating in Division of Biological Sciences graduate courses.
The interdisciplinary program has about 35 faculty members from the medical school, veterinary school, Graduate School of Management, electrical engineering, computer science, biological sciences and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
For more information, call (530)752-2981 or e-mail MedInformatics@ucdavis.edu. The program's Web site is at http://informatics.ucdavis.edu. Other graduate groups administered by the Division of Biological Sciences are animal behavior, biochemistry and molecular biology, biophysics, cell and developmental biology, exercise science, genetics, microbiology, neuroscience, physiology, plant biology and population biology.
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