It's a Wrap!
ABLE 2005 Meeting Summary

Mary Schaeffer, meeting host
Virginia Tech University

mschaeff@vt.edu

The 27th annual ABLE Conference at Virginia Tech was held June 20-25, 2005. We had 131 participants registered from 2 countries and 32 states. Eighty-nine institutions were represented, including 5 community colleges.

A supper and board meeting was held on Monday evening at the Donaldson Brown Hotel and Conference Center. A number of board members had plane and luggage problems, but the board meeting went on as scheduled with President Carol Budd keeping things moving along. One of the motions passed included returning membership to one-year enrollments only. This was for accounting ease for both the members and the treasurer. Also, the ABLE 2005 Proceedings will be provided as CDs only on a trial run to see how people like it. It will cost much less, and the files will be in editable PDF format. Another change was the Laboratory Initiative Grants name change to the Roberta Williams Laboratory Initiative Grants. The mini workshop half registration waiver will be dropped, and an honorarium of $50 will be given per mini workshop.

Most of the participants arrived on Tuesday, many in time for the various pre-conference events. Ten people went on the Wolf Creek Indian Village and Museum tour that took them back in time circa 1215AD to a reconstructed Indian village. Twenty people went to the Chateau Morrisette Winery to get the conference off “to a good start”. Twenty people visited the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to learn about ongoing research on the Smart Road. They went from the 21st century Smart Road technology back to the 18th century while on campus with a visit to the Smithfield Plantation, circa 1772.

Our welcome reception on Tuesday evening was held at Owens Banquet Hall, where everyone caught up with friends they hadn’t seen since last year’s ABLE meeting. We had a happy hour and sit-down dinner with Provost Mark McNamee, College of Science Dean Lay Nam Chang, and Robert Jones, head of the Biological Sciences Department, welcoming everyone to Virginia Tech. All acknowledged the efforts of ABLE’s members in furthering scientific education. Maggie Haag wowed the Virginia Tech Provost with her commitment to general biology education. We silently applauded her as we had stressed the same topic with him ourselves earlier in the year. Maggie was much more effective.

There were 14 major workshops conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, including two field workshops. One focused on stream ecology, and another was a forest ecology workshop. Both allowed participants to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Appalachian Mountains and wonderful weather. The workshops ranged from “Resource Allocation Strategies of Plants” to “Discovering Devonian Microfossils,” a computer cladistics exercise, and molecular workshops covering the major fields of biology.

During the noon lunch break on Wednesday, Virginia Tech Forensic Entomologist Dr. Richard Fell gave an engrossing seminar on “Forensic Entomology: The Biology behind CSI.” No one slept through that seminar!

On Wednesday night, Hayden-McNeil Publishing hosted a wonderful reception that was more like a meal at the Holiday Inn, just a short walk from campus. There we had time to meet new members and new participants in ABLE and share the ideas we gained from the day’s workshops.

On Thursday morning a few hardy souls went bird watching with Peggy Spiegel, who toured the Brown Farm in Blacksburg, a local nature reserve. Dr. Arthur Buikema gave a talk on “How ABLE Members can get Fellowships for Travel Abroad.” Art told of his experiences and insights he gained while teaching in Zimbabwe. His talk hit an emotional chord in all of the audience. Thursday evening we had a new -- and hopefully the first of many -- music fests in the Payne Hall lounge. There was floor room only most of the evening as people were drawn in by the music of Dr. Fred Benfield, a Virginia Tech stream ecologist who would rather play country folk and blue grass music than anything else. Mark Kesson from Hayden-McNeil Publishing Co. changed the tone and played oldies but goodies and songs we all knew. The group really got into it and didn’t want to let him stop playing.

Friday morning came too early after the Thursday night music fest. Thank goodness the first mini workshops were a half an hour later than the major workshops had been. When Kathy Nolan set the scene by disrobing to reveal her bathing suit and had a participant rub suntan lotion on her back, her group woke up! From “Beachcomber Ecology” to “Using Customized Tools and Databases for Teaching Bioinformatics” or “Using Calibrated Peer Review to Improve Student Communication Skills,” we had a wide range of mini workshops. We broke out of the mini workshops to attend the Poster Session. There were eleven posters, the most at any ABLE conference. The room was way too small for everyone to see all the posters. With the Poster session given a time slot of its own, everyone could be there at the same time. This is a great problem to have. Hopefully, next year there will be even more.

The noon annual meeting was probably a first, in that Carol Budd handled the meeting in exactly one hour. We had a few more mini workshops in the afternoon, and then went outside to have a group photo taken.

Everyone had a couple of hours to unwind and rest before the banquet at Mountain Lake Resort, best known as the site of the film “Dirty Dancing.” The geology of the lake was favorable, so the lake was full and the weather beautiful. Those umbrellas never got used! Everyone had their fill of shrimp and prime rib and we all enjoyed the limericks each table had to compose to celebrate the end of another ABLE gathering. Carol Budd joyfully handed over the gavel to Bill Glider, our new ABLE president.

On Saturday, many folks had to return home. Some stayed and enjoyed the post-conference trips. Eighteen people went to Natural Bridge, a 215-foot tall 90-foot wide bridge formation that is over 100 million years old. Eleven people braved the rapids at the New River Gorge on the white water rafting trip in West Virginia, getting a two-hour scenic tour of the Appalachian Mountains while getting to the river. Eighteen energetic souls braved the Appalachian Trail, taking a two- mile hike on Dragon’s Tooth that began as a moderate climb and ended with a difficult stretch with rock climbing to get to the summit of Cove Mountain to enjoy the view. And from the photos took at the summit, at 3,000 feet, it was worth the hike. With their dauntless leader Brandi Echols, they took the longer, more difficult, trail home to see another section of the AT. The hikers enjoyed the varied flora along the way.

Sunday morning, everyone dragged out of bed and headed for home. Monday morning, Derring Hall was way too quiet. We missed the level of energy and enthusiasm the ABLE group brought to Virginia Tech. From the housekeeping staff to the Provost, Virginia Tech now knows the important contributions the members of ABLE make to furthering biology education.