"Research university" is a phrase that constantly intrigues Sarah C.R. Elgin, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences. "There is the implication --almost a promise --that research and teaching go hand-in-hand, indeed, that one cannot exist without the other," she said in her McDonnell Hall office. "It is a concept that has been eloquently defended by many at this research university, but I think there remains much doubt in the minds of tuition-paying parents and research funders alike. Do they really go hand-in-hand? Or, can you do a better job if you focus in one direction or another?"
Trying to maintain this balance has been a major concern for Elgin during her 16 years at Washington University.
"I've been very fortunate to work at a time when powerful new tools have become available to biologists," she said. "Our ability to identify and manipulate genes has provided us with unprecedented opportunities to carry out experiments in biological systems. When I was in high school and college, I found chemistry more attractive than biology because of the possibility of controlled experiments. Too often in biology lab, all we could do was observe. Now, with recombinant DNA techniques, all that has changed."
Elgin grew up in Salem, Oregon. She went to Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and majored in chemistry. Growing up in the post-Sputnik era, she benefited from the emphasis then on good science education.
At Pomona, Elgin participated in a pioneering undergraduate research program funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and designed to attract students to interdisciplinary areas such as biochemistry and biophysics.
"We could apply for a research stipend to use at any research university," she said. "I decided to try the nearby California Institute of Technology (known as Caltech). On looking at the faculty list, my adviser said, 'Why don't you try working for (James) Bonner --he isn't always right, but he's always interesting.' That's how I got into research on chromatin structure --how the DNA is packaged in the nucleus and how that packaging helps to control gene expression."
Elgin continued to pursue that interest, first as a graduate student with Bonner and a postdoctoral fellow with Leroy Hood at Caltech in Pasadena, then in her own laboratory at Harvard University and, since 1981, at Washington University.
"I've been fortunate to have had a series of outstanding junior colleagues working with me," said Elgin. "We currently are studying a protein called 'GAGA factor,' which appears to play a critical role in organizing the nucleosomes in such a way that gene expression can be initiated."
Using the fruit fly, Drosophila, as a system, Elgin and her team recently have concentrated on a region of chromatin called heterochromatin, a gene-poor, relatively inactive part of the genome found in the center of chromosomes. Genes placed in or near the heterochromatin tend to be inactive or silent much of the time. There are clues that this silencing also is due to the way DNA is packaged, and recent work with yeast indicates that the silencing of certain genes is critical in aging.
"Most of our genes are turned off," Elgin explained. "Humans have 50,000 to 100,000 genes, and it only takes a small subset of them to run a cell. All the rest are involved in special functions in particular tissues. Keeping things off, then, is just as important as turning them on. If the ability to maintain silencing disintegrates, that may be the key to inducing senescence. In my laboratory, we're intrigued by that."
"Undergraduate research opportunities are the crown jewel in our biology curriculum," Elgin said. "With the help of our colleagues in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences (at the School of Medicine), we can provide a research experience for every undergraduate who wants it and works for it."
Mindful of her own early experiences, Elgin is particularly interested in encouraging women and minority students. At Caltech in the late 1960s, there were no women among Caltech's 700 faculty and staff; of the 700 graduate students, she was one of only 40 women.
Being in the minority was "something you got used to then," Elgin noted. "I considered it an advantage because professors would always remember my name," she said.
Elgin did not feel so isolated nearly 30 years later when she received the Senior Career Recognition Award last December from Women in Cell Biology at the annual meeting of the American Society of Cell Biologists.
That recognition is one of many for Elgin, who has become a distinguished cell biologist, a leader in science education reform and outreach, an influential and inspiring teacher and an active participant in prominent science circles. Within the past year, she has chaired the summer 1996 Gordon Research Conference on Nuclear Proteins, Chromatin Structure and Gene Expression and is serving as a member of the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council at the NIH. She also is a member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Education in the Life Sciences, a national group that focuses on undergraduate education.
Locally and regionally, Elgin has been a force in area elementary and secondary school science education by securing funding for and instituting programs that bring the expertise of the University's science faculty to St. Louis-area teachers and students. In 1989, Elgin organized the Washington University/University City Science Education Partnership. The arrangement involves the efforts of dozens of University faculty and staff who lecture, help set up experiments, and assist in planning lessons ranging from genetics and physics to environmental studies.
"For a long time, people had not taken elementary science education very seriously," Elgin said. "In many school districts, art education was receiving four times more funding than the sciences because superintendents and principals knew that art is a hands-on subject, while they consider science to be something that is taught with books and worksheets. But science is a process of activity and hands-on learning. This requires materials, plans and experiences that many teachers cannot come up with on their own because most elementary school teachers have their degrees in elementary education or language arts."
The 1989 partnership endeavor with University City schools was the seed project that blossomed into two other programs run through the biology department's Science Outreach Program.
An NIH-funded program helps develop curriculum and training opportunities that allow high school teachers to implement a sophisticated yet accessible curriculum in genetics. High schools representing different socio-economic backgrounds in University City, Webster Groves, Jennings and Washington, Mo., have successfully participated in the program.
Funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) supports summer research opportunities for high school students, demonstration teaching by University undergraduate students, and a prefreshman summer program in biology and biomedical sciences for new Washington University students.
Although large amounts of time and energy can be gobbled up by science outreach, Elgin considers the work well worth it. "Science outreach is my hobby," she said with a smile. "More people should try it. The enthusiasm that the younger students have is really contagious --it reminds you again of why you got so excited about doing experiments."
Elgin teaches "Biology 337: The Cell Nucleus," an undergraduate course co-taught in different years with Craig S. Pikaard, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, and John E. Majors, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics in the medical school. Elgin lectures occasionally for graduate courses and seminars in chromatin structure and gene expression. In the summers, she has taught in a molecular biology course for high school teachers and in the spring has participated in Education 600 through University College in Arts and Sciences, an HHMI-supported curriculum course for K-8 teachers.
But can it all be done? Elgin admits to a shortage of time and resulting stress.
"We have some great things going on in the lab; we have great things in the outreach program. And this year, the major grants in both areas are up for renewal."
But Elgin is a firm believer in genetics.
"I was born optimistic; I'm still optimistic," she said. "There are a lot of people here working very hard to make sure that the biology major provides all kinds of exciting opportunities; that the research we do is of value to the scientific community; and that we contribute to interpreting that research to the public --that's what it takes to have a research university."
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