SWALLOW
There ya go Thumpsters. Go nuts.
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Jan 20, 2005
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U Professor John Swallow earns Prestigious Career Award from the National Science Foundation
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VERMILLION, S.D. -- Native American and other rural students from across South Dakota will benefit from a new grant awarded to Dr. John Swallow, an assistant professor in the biology department at The University of South Dakota.</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD></TR><TR><TD>Swallow is the recipient of a five year Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER program recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who will most likely become the academic leaders of the 21<SUP>st</SUP> century. The CAREER award is one of NSF’s most prestigious awards.
Swallow has been awarded a total of $648,836 over five years for a project entitled “Performance and Fitness Consequences of Insect Ornaments.” The project is a study of ornamental displays and physical traits important to sexual selection and evolution in stalk-eyed flies. Swallow has studied stalk-eyed flies for some time as his research focuses on evolutionary physiology and the correlated evolution of complex traits (e.g. behavioral and physiological traits).
An even more important reason for the success of Swallow’s grant application appears to be his willingness to provide a training environment for students at a variety of levels from pre-college to postdoctoral training. Undergraduate students will be encouraged to participate in his research and present findings at local and national forums. Swallow’s research will also be incorporated into “hands-on” experiences for students in his college courses and for instructors affiliated with the Mobile Science Laboratory (MSL) in South Dakota.
“This research is important because it will test decades-old hypotheses about how elaborate ornaments evolve, and what constrains them, in a systematic way and that will contribute significantly to the fields of behavioral ecology, evolutionary physiology, and biomechanics,” Swallow said. “This grant will introduce South Dakota to stalk-eyed flies, a truly extraordinary insect to look at. I think engaging undergraduate and graduate students in research with these striking organisms could really capture their interest and help make learning science fun and accessible.”
Outreach projects developed for the MSL will expose K-12 students from American Indian reservations and rural schools to the process of science and discovery. Swallow estimates that thousands of South Dakota students can benefit from this outreach program.
A hi-resolution photo (200 dpi) of Dr. Swallow is available for download at:
www.usd.edu/urelations/images/Swallow.jpg. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>