Biologist Ursula Goodenough brings perspective on religion and science to SU Oct. 28

Biologist Ursula Goodenough brings perspective on religion and science to SU Oct. 28October 26, 2004Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

A biologist who has been long involved in discussions on religion and science will be the next guest in Syracuse University’s Nature/Religion/Knowledge/

Politics Lecture Series, hosted by the Department of Religion in The College of Arts and Sciences.

Ursula Goodenough, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, will speak on “Exploring the Concept of Religious Naturalism” on Thursday, Oct. 28, at 7 p.m. in the 1916 Room of E.S. Bird Library. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Earlier in the day, Goodenough will speak during the Religion & Society Program’s fourth event in its series on religion and politics. The event, a conversation on “The Intersection of Science and Religion in the 2004 Election,” will be held at 11:45 a.m. in Room 202 of the Hall of Languages. The program will provide lunch to all who make a reservation by contacting Sherry Hayes at slhayes@syr.edu by noon on Tuesday, Oct. 26.

Goodenough’s research has focused on the cell biology and (molecular) genetics of the sexual phase of the life cycle of the unicellular eukaryotic green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and, more recently, on the evolution of the genes governing mating-related traits. She has also studied the molecular basis for flagellar motility, the assembly of the Chlamydomonas cell wall and the inheritance of chloroplast DNA.

Her laboratory is currently supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). She wrote three editions of a widely adopted textbook,

“Genetics,” and has served in numerous capacities in national biomedical arenas, including service on NIH and NSF review panels, membership on committees of the NRC, editorial boards for several professional journals and many positions in the American Society for Cell Biology, including the presidency.

Goodenough joined the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) in 1989 and has served continuously on its council and as its president for four years. She has presented papers and seminars on science and religion in numerous arenas, co-chaired four IRAS conferences, serves on the editorial board of Zygon and authored “The Sacred Depths of Nature”(Oxford University Press, 1998), which offers religious perspectives on our scientific understandings of nature, particularly biology at a molecular level.

Goodenough received a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Radcliffe and Barnard colleges, a master’s degree in zoology from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. She performed two years of postdoctoral research at Harvard and was assistant and associate professor of biology at Harvard before joining the faculty of Washington University.

The lecture series is co-sponsored by SU’s Department of Biology, Department of Religion, enSPIRE, Native American Studies Program, Religion and Society Program, South Asia Center and the SUNY-ESF Women’s Caucus.

For more information, contact the Department of Religion at 443-3861.