Jeanne Narum: A Lifetime of Achievement

Hats. Colorful hats. Stylish hats. Playful hats. A wardrobe often reveals a lot about a person's place in the world. In Jeanne Narum's case, her exquisite taste in hats symbolizes the energy and vitality that she radiates. Indeed, her energy is infectious and is widely known for being the source of an academic pandemic leading to the transformation of undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics across the United States. Two things happen when Jeanne walks into a room: First, the conversation in the room becomes electric with ideas; and second, before they know it, folks in the room have committed to helping Jeanne launch new initiatives, plan new meetings, advise new faculty, and much, much more. To her credit, folks take on these responsibilities with a smile. Indeed, folks that Jeanne has recruited to contribute their time and energy to Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) walk away from their conversations with her grateful for the opportunity to help her and PKAL in some way. Of course, more than one or two have also walked away scratching their heads trying to figure out what possessed them to run the next PKAL workshop, write an article, or serve on a task force for PKAL. Jeanne has the rare ability to engage, inspire, and transform individuals and communities. She has most certainly done that for the neuroscience education community. In 1994, shortly after the founding of Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN), Jeanne and FUN struck up what was to become an enduring partnership to transform undergraduate education in neuroscience. With Jeanne's help, FUN was able to deliver on a major promise made to its fledgling membership, the creation of workshops designed to promote undergraduate neuroscience education by exploring " what works " in a variety of institutions from across the country. The first meeting, held at Davidson College in 1995, entitled " Interdisciplinary Education: Undergraduate Education in Neuroscience, " was attended by about 80 participants from across the country invested in establishing neuroscience as a crucial interdisciplinary element of the undergraduate science curriculum. In addition to numerous workshops on innovations in laboratory teaching, grant writing, recruitment and retention of minority students in neuroscience, and introductory " flavors " of neuroscience, a major outcome of the meeting was the creation of four blueprints for undergraduate neuroscience. Subsequent meetings at Oberlin College in 1998 (" Blueprints for Reform "), at Trinity College in 2001 (" …