Michael Romano named 2008 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer

Michael RomanoMichael Romano, professor of biological sciences, was selected as the University's 2008 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer.

The WIU Distinguished Faculty Lecturer (DFL) delivers a lecture on the Macomb and WIU-QC campuses during the Spring semester. Romano's lecture, “DNA Technology and Pandora's Box,” explores benefits and problems DNA technology has on society.

“Current DNA technology has caused extraordinary changes within our society,” Romano said. “While this technology is having increasingly positive effects on our everyday life, it also poses great problems for society, particularly in the area of healthcare. Genetic information has the potential for harming individuals if misused and legislative attempts at preventing this will be discussed.

“Some of the stories and anecdotes involving DNA applications [I have studied] are both amusing and surprising. Some of the applications, of course, [are becoming highly recognizable] from popular television shows and the like, but I [try to] emphasize the significance to both science and society regarding the application of DNA technology,” he added.

Romano, curator of reptiles and amphibians for Western's biology department, specializes in the areas of population genetics and molecular ecology of a wide variety of animals. He has a special interest in the genetic relationships of the hylid frogs, Mississippi turtles and Illinois wild turkey.

Much of Romano's research since he joined Western's faculty in 1984 has been through the University's Alice L. Kibbe Life Science Station, located near the Mississippi River in Warsaw , Ill. (See below.)

He has presented some 60 professional papers and abstracts; has contributed 19 articles to professional journals; and has supervised 15 master's theses and nine honors theses. He has served on numerous departmental committees.

At the University level, Romano has served as vice president of the Western Illinois chapter of University Professionals of Illinois (UPI), the UPI/Administration negotiation of contract agreement, the University Graduate Council and the Distance Learning Advisory Board. He also served as an elected member of the Upper Mississippi River Research Consortium executive board in the roles of president, vice president and secretary.

Prior to coming to Western, Romano was a Teaching Fellow and Dissertation Fellow at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

Romano earned his Ph.D. from Miami University and his master's and bachelor's degrees from the University of Vermont.

Western first presented an annual lecturer award in 1969 to honor an outstanding faculty member whose professional development in research or creative activity, teaching and service to the University represent the highest standards of the academic community. In 1998 the award was renamed the Distinguished Faculty Lecturer.

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Research on the River

Every summer since 2002, Michael Romano and five co-principal investigators from the department, mentor a team of high-achieving high school students from across the country through the Student Challenge Awards Program's (SCAP) Earthwatch Institute, as they work together on long-term riparian (river bank) and aquatic ecosystem monitoring projects on the Upper Mississippi River.

“We are very proud of the SCAP program at our field station. Over the past few years, my colleagues and I have gotten high quality assistance from some of the brightest young high school students I have ever met,” Romano said. “Many of these students have found their field experience at Kibbe, Western's Life Science Station, so valuable that they have actually changed their minds about their career paths and gone into ecology, environmental science or other related biological fields.”

Kibbe is unique as a field station because of its geographic location in the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS), an area of great ecological and economic importance, which in 1986 was recognized as a nationally significant ecosystem by Congress, Romano said.

The teaching and research station is on a 200-mile stretch of the UMRS and offers a diversity of aquatic and terrestrial communities, which makes the station an important venue for future studies of the influence of human activities on the UMRS and the unique ecosystems within the UMRS watershed.

The portion of the river associated with Kibbe and Pool 19, just upstream of the station, provides critical habitat to some 40 freshwater mussels and 150 species of fish, including the state endangered lake sturgeon, the rare blue sucker and paddlefish; as well as 90 species of breeding birds, 70 species of butterflies and some of the most rare diverse plant communities in the Midwest in hill prairies, sand prairies and oak savannas, he added.

Romano was among four co-principal investigators who helped secure a $243,300 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which - along with matching money from the University - funded a nearly $500,000 environmentally friendly multipurpose facility addition to Kibbe which opened in 2004. The NSF grant was among 18 funded projects from 68 proposals nationwide.

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