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For the first time on the SUNY College at Oneonta campus, Biology majors now have a national honors society of their own. Friends, family and a few Hartwick students looked on as 37 charter members, which was made up of students and faculty, were inducted into Beta Beta Beta on Saturday, May 1 at the Hunt College Union Waterfront Café.
Traveling from Manhattanville College, Tri-Beta Northeast-1 District Director Dr. Annemarie Bettica was the installing officer where she formally declared the OSC Theta Nu Chapter and installed the elected officers. President Beth Romano, Vice President Brandon Smith, Secretary Michelle Davis, Treasurer Erin Schulz, and Historians Peter Carofano and Morgan Larson and Faculty Advisor Dr. William Pietraface will lead these motivated biologists into several projects and events regarding the promotion of scientific research. "Next Year we hope to show the positive influences that SUNY Oneonta's Beta Beta Beta brings out to the science community, both locally and nationally," said Smith. |
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After the forty minute ceremony, Dr. Stanley Sessions, Professor of Biology at Hartwick College and former Tri-Beta advisor there, presented a speech on his research area, the deformities of amphibians. He discussed how his research and that of his undergraduate students has led them to believe that the reason that frogs and salamanders have anywhere from six to twelve limbs and some are missing limbs is because of an invasion of a parasite called digenetic trematode. These parasites look to go back to their original host, commonly birds (herons) which feed on amphibians, so they attached themselves to the joints of the hind legs of a frog or salamander and infects it with Bromodeoxyuridine which replicates DNA. By making it so the amphibians grow extra limbs, they become easier to catch for the birds to then prey on them and the trematode would finally make it back home.
Beta Beta Beta was founded in 1922 at Oklahoma City University and over 430 chapters are established throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Applicants must have a B average in three biology courses, one of which cannot be an introductory level biology course. |
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