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3/31/2009 Linfield receives grant to study pine trees
McMINNVILLE – Linfield College was awarded a $15,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust from Vancouver, Wash., which will fund whitebark pine tree research by a Linfield professor and a McMinnville High School teacher.
The grant will enable John Syring, assistant professor of biology at Linfield, and Laura Syring, McMinnville High School biology teacher, who are married, to participate in a research project with Linfield students over the course of two summers in the Department of Biology at Linfield. The Syrings and the students will study genetic diversity of whitebark pine trees, a high-elevation species currently threatened by the fungal pathogen white pine blister rust. The results, which will help in the conservation of the species, will be presented by Laura Syring at a national Partners in Science conference.
The grant was awarded through a competitive process in the Partners in Science program at the Murdock Trust. The primary goal of the program is to provide high school teachers with opportunities to work with cutting-edge scientific research to revitalize their teaching and help them appreciate the use of inquiry-based methods of teaching in science.
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