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Invigorating Minds: The Kufe Family Research Support Fund

Story posted April 06, 2006

Bowdoin faculty have the power to inspire, provoke, motivate, influence, embolden and transform students because they themselves are deeply engaged at the forefront of their chosen fields. Crucial to their work as scholars and teachers and their positions in their fields is sabbatic time. Few understand this better than Dr. Donald Kufe ’66, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he has worked on the molecular biology of human cancer and the development of anti-cancer agents for nearly 30 years. Dr. Kufe recently established the Kufe Family Research Support Fund at Bowdoin, a new resource that will provide support for biology and chemistry department faculty to take sabbatical leaves, and to attend professional conferences and meetings in support of their research.

Dr. Kufe, who graduated Bowdoin suma cum laude in biology, chose to fund faculty research support because of the experience he had working closely with science professors, especially John Howland. “I would not be where I am today if I had not had that [research] experience,” Don explains. “It was Bowdoin that influenced me to this career in the sciences, and the ability to do research with someone at Bowdoin was important. Supporting the faculty to do their research will have a huge impact on the education process. Not as many [donors] support this area, so considering opportunities, I saw the chance to make a difference here. The research component is vital to the students and the curriculum.”

“Sabbatical is crucial for my work,” says Associate Professor of Chemistry Richard Broene, who recently benefited from sabbatical time to work with fellow researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill. “It gives me the opportunity to visit with other investigators in my field who can inform my research, to learn new methods and techniques from thei laboratories, and have time to explore new areas of scientific inquiry. The chance to engage [with other chemists] for a sustained period of time allows me to flesh out new research ideas with them, think in depth about their research, and to find out how things are done in their labs—[and] time away from the everyday activities of the College allows me to focus intensely on complicated problems that require sustained concentration.

“I always return from sabbatical with fresh ideas for teaching,” Broene says. “My research informs my teaching, and the chance to refocus on current methods and chemical theory allows me to offer a better and more current perspective on organic chemistry—and [students] gain substantially from the updated ideas that return with me from the sabbatical.”

Likewise for biology professor Barry Logan, who studies “the mechanisms plants employ to deal with stressful environments such as wintertime cold temperatures and intense sunlight.” He spent his sabbatical at UC-Berkeley “in the lab of a renowned geneticist [who] is credited with some of the most interesting and important recent discoveries of the molecular mechanisms of plant stress tolerance.” Logan brought seeds of an experimental plant strain back to Bowdoin from his sabbatical, and those seeds formed the basis for an honors dssertation by Sam Terry ’04. Logan has published papers with collaborators on those strains, and he and his Bowdoin students use them in his plant physiology class. Logan is currently writing up his sabbatical research and Sam Terry’s data for publication in the peerreviewed scientific journal, New Phytologist.

For more information, please contact Randolph H. Shaw ’82, Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations, (207) 725-3407 or rshaw2@bowdoin.edu.