Draft:Cell Biology and Neuroscience Department at Montana State University

• Comment: There is an enormous amount of unsourced promotion here, it will need hacking back and many additional sources added. Theroadislong (talk) 19:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

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The Cell Biology and Neuroscience (CBN) Department at Montana State University (MSU) was formed in 2000 and was the first academic Neuroscience department in the state of Montana. In May 2019, the department was dissolved by MSU's then Provost, Dr. Robert Mokwa. All 9 tenure-track and ~8 non-tenure track faculty were moved into MSU's Department of Microbiology and Immunology (MBI), which was subsequently renamed the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology in 2021. At the time of it's dissolution, the CBN faculty were responsible for teaching and providing hands-on research opportunities for more than 300 undergraduate CBN majors and 5 doctoral candidates.

History

The Department of Cell Biology & Neuroscience (CBN) began as a group of faculty in MSU's Biology Department which shared interests in biomedical research, particularly in the neurosciences. The interests of these faculty diverged over time from the majority of the Biology faculty, whose research was primarily focused on fisheries and wildlife management and ecology. The biomedical faculty asked for, and received, permission from the Administration to form a new, more biomedical-focused department. In 2000, the existing Biology Department was split into two new departments: the Cell Biology and Neuroscience Department and the Department of Ecology and Evolution. In the two decades that followed, thousands of majors graduated from CBN, becoming MSU alumni that serve important roles in medicine and biomedical science both in Montana and across the country.

The department quickly became the most popular pre-med major on campus with consistently having 300-400 majors up until the time of it's dissolution in 2019. In addition to teaching, the CBN faculty maintained strong, externally funded research programs in a variety of basic science areas. In 2019, just before the department was eliminated, CBN had more NIH R01 grants per faculty member than that of any other biomedical department on the MSU campus. Acceptance rates at medical schools for CBN undergrads were twice the national average, and many students worked in CBN research labs and shared authorship on high-impact, peer-reviewed publications. An additional indication of CBN faculty commitment to undergraduate education came from its applying for and receiving several undergraduate curriculum grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Past department heads

• Dr. Gwen Jacobs (2000-2008)
• Dr. Thomas Hughes (2008-2012)
• Dr. Frances Lefcort (2012-2016)
• Dr. Roger Bradley (2016-2019)

Past tenure track CBN faculty

• Dr. Gwen Jacobs, PhD, joined the MSU faculty in 1998 following having a faculty position at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. Dr. Jacobs became the first department head of CBN. She held a joint research and teaching appointment. She taught several classes including Neuroethology. Dr. Jacobs research entailed studying neural coding of sensory information. Dr. Jacobs left the department in 2013 to direct IT at the University of Hawaii.
• Dr. Behrad Noudoust, MD, PhD joined the CBN department in 2013 after a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Noudoust's research focused on the neural circuits involved in visual working memory and visual attention. He taught courses in Neurophysiology and Sensory Neurophysiology. Dr. Noudoust left the department in 2016 to join the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Tenure track CBN faculty at the time of dissolution

• Dr. Frances Lefcort, PhD, joined the MSU faculty in 1994 following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Lefcort held a joint research and teaching appointment. She taught several classes at MSU including Neurophysiology, Molecular Medicine and Medical Ethics. She also taught in the WWAMI Program. Dr. Lefcort's research focused on development of the peripheral nervous disease in health and disease.
• Dr. Steve Eiger, PhD, joined the MSU faculty in 1994 also following a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF. Dr. Eiger held a teaching appointment in the department. He designed the majors' introductory physiology class BioH 185, including writing his own unpublished textbook when he discovered that established textbooks did not cover the breadth of information he wanted to cover in the class. Dr. Eiger won numerous awards for his teaching (links). He also taught in the WWAMI Medical Education Program.
• Dr. Roger Bradley, PhD, joined the MSU faculty in 1996 following a postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Institute. He studied cell adhesion molecule function and signaling in the developing nervous system. Dr. Bradley taught courses in Cell Biology and Pharmacology
• Dr. John Miller, PhD, also joined the MSU faculty in 1998 after having a faculty position at UC Berkeley. Dr. Miller held a joint research and teaching appointment. He taught fundamental classes including the introduction to neuroscience BioH 313 as well as advanced neuroscience classes like Sensory Neurophysiology. He studied neuronal firing patterns and sensory coding using crickets as a model system. Dr. Miller became an Emeritus Professor in 2015.
• Dr. Charlie Gray, PhD, joined the department in 1999, coming from an UC Davis, where he was a Professor of Neuroscience. Research in Dr. Gray's lab was primarily in the area of visual cortex and the functional role of cortical oscillations. Dr. Gray taught Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Illness.
• Dr. Christa Merzdorf, PhD, joined the CBN department in 1999 after a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. She studies Zic transcription factors in early development. Dr. Merzdorf teaches courses in the areas of Cell and Developmental Biology.
• Dr. Thomas Hughes, PhD, joined the department in 2000, coming from the Yale School of Medicine, where he had been an Associate Professor affiliated with Yale's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP). He taught courses in Cell biology and Gene expression.
• Dr. Steve Stowers, PhD, joined the CBN department in 2009 after a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. Dr. Stowers teaches courses in biomedical genetics and advanced genetics.
• Dr. Cassie Cusick, PhD, joined the MSU faculty after holding an Associate Professor position at Tulane University. Her role is as a full time instructor in the WWAMI Medical Education Program.
• Dr. Susy Kohout, PhD, joined the CBN department in 2013 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. Dr. Kohout studied the biophysical characteristics of voltage sensing proteins important in the nervous system as well as other organs like the kidneys. Dr. Kohout taught courses in Cell Biology and neurological disease.
• Dr. James Mazer, PhD joined the department in 2016, coming from Yale University, where he was an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Psychology. Dr. Mazer's visual neuroscience laboratory studied interactions between top-down visual attention, oculomotor planning and reward valuation. Dr. Mazer taught courses in Sensory Neurophysiology and Neuroethology.

Curriculum Improvements

In 2013, the Department began a process of extensively reorganizing the CBN curriculum to better match the evolving educational needs of its students. The faculty revisited the existing learning outcomes for the CBN major, taking into account the greater need for critical thinking, problem solving and writing skills required for most student career choices (medical school, graduate school). The faculty started with the required basic science classes, asking how whether or not these courses were laying a proper foundation for the upper level courses, and based on the results of that analysis developed new learning outcomes for these essential courses. With all the relevant faculty at the table, they improved the introductory CBN courses to provide a stronger foundation for incoming students. Then they moved onto the second and third year classes, asking whether these more advanced courses built effectively on the new foundational courses, what skills were being taught and what was still needed to prepare the students for the upper division elective classes. Lastly, the faculty tackled how the upper division classes integrated all the information from the lower division classes into the skills every student needed to graduate with a CBN degree. Skill assessments were added at the beginning of each classes to help quantitatively evaluate how the curricular changes were impacting student outcomes and regular in-class assessments and peer-review mechanisms were added allow each professor and the department as a whole to internally evaluate the effectiveness of the new curriculum. Over the years, the data generated by these regular assessments showed an increased understanding of the material as well as stronger critical thinking, problem solving and writing skills. Ultimately, the faculty intentionally built a cohesive and integrated curriculum for their students.  

The final seven months of CBN

In November 2018, MSU's Provost, Dr. Robert Mokwa, presented CBN Department Head Dr. Roger Bradley with a plan to eliminate the CBN department as a free-standing university department and to move the current CBN faculty into a new School of Human Biology. The stated mission of the new School was primarily to provide basic pre-medical undergraduate biology training. The new school was planned to exclusively support undergraduate students pursuing health professional (MD, DDS, DVM), and not research careers. The Provost suggested that school might be allowed to have a limited and narrow research mission - one restricted to area of health outcome research, not basic science. Moreover, the school, like the Jabs Business College, was not intended to contain any actual departments -- it would just be the CBN faculty in a new, primarily teaching role, with little or no opportunity to perform or support biomedical research. At the outset of the proposal, Dr. Bradley noted that the new school excluded several other MSU departments with strong, complementary pre-medical training programs. These departments, like the CBN department, also had strong, externally funded biomedical research programs and included Chemistry & Biochemistry, Psychology and Microbiology & Immunology. Dr. Bradley asked why these other departments were not going to be part of the new school, but received no clear answer.

The new school was to be based on a non-traditional (for MSU) administrative structure; while MSU departments were (and are) traditionally run by a Department Head with teaching and research experience in the field, either someone selected by the faculty from the existing faculty, or an external hire. The new school was to be run by an administrative "Director", appointed by the Administration without input from the faculty; the Provost refused to commit to selecting someone with relevant research or teaching experience. When Dr. Bradley brought the proposal back to the department, the CBN faculty were unanimously opposed. The opposition was based primarily on two key factors:

1. The department's long-standing research mission was in the area of basic biomedical science. The ongoing NIH- and NSF-funded research departmental labs had no connection to the proposed health outcomes research focus of the new proposed School. This would mean that there would be no place in the new school for the existing, externally funded, faculty research programs.

2. The new organizational structure would have isolated CBN students and faculty from other basic and biomedical science departments on campus.

In addition, the CBN faculty believed that this new school was not in the best interests of the CBN students. They argued that the CBN department had been delivering provably the best pre-medical training in the state, with the highest acceptance rates and generally best student outcomes, across the MSU campus and also compared to MSU's rival the University of Montana, which had only recently started to develop an undergraduate Neuroscience major. In short, the faculty argued that the major was effective as it was and that the new school could actually negatively affect student outcomes. In short, the faculty argued that the program wasn't broken, so why change it?

However, the Provost refused to consider the arguments made by the CBN faculty - instead, he started the process of placing the Neuroscience doctoral program "in moratorium" with the intention of eliminating the program within 2 years. Without a doctoral program, the CBN department would have been instantly transformed into a teaching-only department, with no research mission. The Provost's justification for eliminating the doctoral program was based on what he considered low enrollment numbers. However, the faculty presented clear evidence, based on historical data collected by the MUS planning office and published data collected by the Society for Neuroscience, that the department's doctoral enrollment numbers were on par with the national average for programs with similar sized faculty. In meetings with Provost Mokwa and President Waded Cruzado, the faculty argued that because doctoral Neuroscience training in the US is almost exclusively supported by federal grants to faculty, growing the size of the doctoral program would require more faculty and research labs to train, house and fund additional students. At the time, there were several open faculty lines in CBN due to retirements and departures (at least 3, perhaps more) - the faculty argued that the fastest way to grow the program size would be to start with filling the open faculty lines.

These arguments fell on deaf ears and in early December 2018, the Dean of the College of Letters and Science, Dr. Nicol Rae, along with associate deans Dr. David Cherry and Dr. Bridget Kevane, met with CBN faculty and encouraged the faculty members to simply embrace the Provost's School of Human Biology. When the faculty expressed continued concern about the lack of a basic-science research mission and the non-traditional organizational structure, Dr. Rae indicated that the department didn't have a choice. In short, he indicated the decision had already been made and that if the department didn't get in line, the Neuroscience Doctoral program, which was an essential component of the Department's research program, would be eliminated forthwith to punish the department for non-compliance with the Administration's plans. He also suggested that non-compliance might very well lead to wholesale elimination of the department and termination of the CBN faculty, including tenured faculty.

In November and December of 2018, Dr. Bradley met several times with the MSU Administration to present and discuss alternative plans for the new School that would be less disruptive to CBN's existing programs. This included a comprehensive plan to bring multiple biomedical departments into the new school to bootstrap an interdisciplinary life-sciences program. This plan was not only supported by the CBN faculty, but also by several other biomedical departments on campus, and would likely have been a boon to both students and faculty. However, in the middle of these discussions, Provost Mokwa sent a mass email to the entire MSU campus suggesting that Dr. Bradley and the Department had initiated the processes of building a new school, when in fact, the entire process was initiated by Dr. Mokwa and the MSU administration, and was opposed by the CBN faculty. The CBN faculty were simply responding to the Administration's request to come up with a "better" plan. Dr. Bradley attempted to clarify this misinformation by reaching out to fellow Department Heads on campus to explain what had really happened, but this turned out to be difficult, and he found himself without a suitable platform to effectively respond to Dr. Mokwa's false narrative in a timely fashion.

As the situation grew worse and students started to express concern about their training options, the CBN faculty decided together that a public response to the Provost’s campus-wide email and its mischaracterization of CBN's educational, research and service activities was required. Dr. Bradley wrote a letter explaining the state of affairs and outlining the concerns of the CBN faculty which was published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Two days later, the growing conflict between CBN faculty and the MSU Administration was further covered by the local medal ; both media reports indicated that faculty were not part of the discussions about the future of their own department and quoted Provost Mokwa as saying that the department was not going to be disbanded. News coverage continued where students expressed concern and alarm at what was happening to their department.

Seven days after the Dr. Bradley's letter appeared in the local paper, he was removed as CBN department head over the protests of the entire CBN faculty. He was immediately replaced by Dr. David Cherry, an Associate Dean in the College of Letters and Science, and a Roman historian, with no experience in biomedical training or research. Dr. Cherry remained in charge of the department from January 2019 through the final dissolution of the CBN Department in May 2019.

Once the situation was covered in the local media, the MSU Faculty Senate, lead by Chair Dr. Abigail Richards and Chair-elect Dr. Eric Austin, became involved. To move the conversation out of the public eye, they hired a professional mediator Betsy Johnston. Ms. Johnston proceeded to meet with all of the CBN faculty members individually and in groups with the stated goal of bringing the department and the administration into the same room to discuss the issues at hand. As a measure of good faith in this process, the department developed a comprehensive five year plan to increase the size of the Neuroscience Doctoral program and address specific concerns raised by Provost Mokwa. After extensive negotiations between the department and the administration through the mediator, a five year plan for the Neuroscience graduate program was signed, February 19th 2019 by Roger Bradley, the previous department head, Dr. David Cherry, the Associate Dean to the College of Letters and Science and acting CBN department head, Dr. Nicol Rae, Dean of the College of Letters and Science, Dr. Ronald Larson, Vice Provost and Interim Dean of the Graduate School, and the Provost, Dr. Mokwa. Ms. Johnston continued to work with the department until April, when she announced that because both groups were not willing to meet (the CBN department had been requesting a meeting for months, but the Administration, specifically Provost Mokwa, refused to meet with CBN faculty), there was little she could do for the situation. Ms. Johnston wrote a confidential report for the Faculty Senate which was neither made public nor shared with the CBN faculty she worked with.

By April 2019, the 300+ CBN undergraduates were growing increasingly concerned about the future of their department - as part of the mediation process, the CBN faculty agreed to keep the process and state of negotiations out of the public eye. As a result, three CBN students, Derek Hetherington, Luke Channer and Colin King, initiated a petition in an effort to save the department. They acquired 537 signatures in just five days. The petition clearly indicated that students, the primary stakeholders and consumer's of MSU's offerings, had been completely excluded from the process and that, despite claims about valuing transparency and shared governance, the Administration was “not listening to the faculty or students.

The students presented their petition to the Administration on April 30, 2019, which lead to a public response by MSU President Waded Cruzado where she stated that the university would "not replace a process based on data for one based on collection of signatures" and indicated the petition would not have any influence on the administrations decisions regarding the CBN department. On May 3rd, the Provost met with Dr. James Mazer, one of the CBN professors, and assured him there was no plan to "touch the major or change the organization of the department"; he indicated that he wanted to replace retiring (CBN) faculty and was committed to "making it work". As noted in an article in Inside Higher Ed, departments typically targeted for cuts are humanities, not science departments, and not departments with over 300 undergraduate students; the article indicated that CBN was "hardly a failing program by that metric" and went on to describe the administrations narrative of a failing department being at odds with the faculty's description of a vibrant, well funded and successful department - in the midst of this debacle, the CBN department continued to train students, perform research and even secure new funding -- one example of that success is an MSU news story touting a new 2.9 million dollar grant brought in by Dr. Lefcort and her colleagues to study neurodegeneration.

Just two weeks after the student petition as delivered, the Provost announced the dissolution of the CBN department via a campus wide email that indicated all CBN faculty and resources were being transferred into the MSU Microbiology and Immunology Department.. As the faculty and students were not a part of this decision making process, they criticized the decision as failing the professed values of MSU of shared governance and transparency.

After the dissolution of CBN

In the months following CBN's official dissolution, students and faculty continued to express grave concerns about the process and outcome. Specifically, students and faculty spoke during the public comment section of the next Board of Regents (BOR) meeting on May 22nd, 2019 (comments start at 8:21:35). Additional comments where made at a subsequent Board of Regents meeting, charging that MSU administration did not follow the Board of Regents's own published rules for dissolving a university department which requires a comprehensive review and formal approval by the Board before any department can be eliminated (comments start at 6:18:50). The Board of Regents expressed their support of the MSU decisions even though they were in violation of the BOR Policy and Procedures Manual. This marked the end of the CBN department. By September 2021, more than half of the original faculty within the department left the university or transitioned to non-teaching, grant-funded research faculty, directly impacting the ability of the remaining faculty (3 of the original 9) to adequately cover the courses in the CBN catalog and and severely limiting the research opportunities that originally attracted many of the CBN students in the first place.

Final state of the CBN program

Current students in the Cell Biology and Neuroscience program were informed their department had been dissolved on the morning of May 15, 2019 in an email entitled "Important changes to strengthen Cell Biology and Neuroscience" from Dr. Nicol Rae, Dean of MSU's College of Letters and Science at the time, which housed the CBN department and student. Dr. Rae's email indicated:

First and foremost, the undergraduate Cell Biology and Neuroscience curriculum at Montana State University will remain intact. The courses students have taken, and are planning to take, will remain available. However, the curriculum, effective immediately, will now be housed under the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, one of the university’s largest and most successful research and teaching departments.

Again, students will still be able to get all of the Cell Biology and Neuroscience courses they had planned on, but their new home will be in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Students will still graduate with a degree in Cell Biology and Neuroscience with one of the two current options: cell biology and neuroscience or biomedical sciences. Additionally, students will remain as members of the College of Letters and Science. ... Again, all the courses that students have come to expect in Cell Biology and Neuroscience, and those they still wish to take, will remain available. Research opportunities for undergraduates across the university will also continue to remain available. Long term, by placing the Cell Biology and Neuroscience program into a larger department, the program will be strengthened at MSU, giving it greater stability, more opportunities for students and research, and bringing it into line with changes that have been underway across the rest of the country.

At the time, Provost Mokwa sent a similar email to all tenure-track MSU faculty members stating:

Effective today, the Cell Biology and Neuroscience academic programs, including both undergraduate options and the master’s and doctoral programs, are transferred to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology for administration and management. The faculty in both departments have the opportunity over the next months to work together and develop a robust administrative and management structure that will provide needed stability and long-term viability to the undergraduate academic program and will provide opportunities to revitalize graduate education and research in the field. How this is achieved will come from the faculty and the processes they develop.

The undergraduate Cell Biology and Neuroscience curriculum at Montana State University will remain intact. The courses students have taken, and are planning to take, will remain available. However, the curriculum will now be housed under the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, one of the university’s largest and most successful research and teaching departments.

Despite the assurances of Dr. Rae and Provost Mokwa, that the CBN program would remain unchanged and stay in the College of Letters and Science after the merger, in March 2021, the Provost quietly moved the program and all the former CBN faculty into MSU's College of Agriculture without advance notice or consent of either the current students or remaining faculty, all of whom were promised they would remain in the College of Letters and Science. By 2022, despite the Administration's promises at the time of the merger than their actions would "strengthen Cell Biology and Neuroscience" and the CBN program would remain intact, only two of the original 10 tenure-track CBN faculty at the time of the merger were still teaching at MSU and the majority of Neuroscience-related courses offered at MSU were either canceled or taught by non-tenure track, non-Neuroscience faculty in the years after the merger. Moreover, as a direct result of faculty departures due to the merger and the Administration's failure to replace the departing faculty in a timely manner, only one Neuroscience research lab remains active on campus, providing limited opportunities for MSU's CBN students to gain hands on Neuroscience research experience.