James Garfield Townsel, PhD

Website:

Google:

Bio:

https://neuronline.sfn.org/Articles/Career-Advice/2018/Why-Supporting-Underrepresented-Minorities-was-a-Driving-Force-for-This-Neuroscientist

FROM MBL PAGE: James Townsel, Ph.D. was introduced to the horseshoe crab, Limulis polyphemus, as a potential research subject in 1963, as a graduate student in zoology/physiology at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. Since there was not a ready supply of horseshoe crabs in Indiana, he became a regular recipient of shipments of animals from the MBL. His first trip to the MBL occurred in the summer of 1971, when, as a charter member of an NIH funded initiative titled Frontiers in Research and Teaching Program (FRTP), he took the neurobiology course. In1972, he returned to the MBL as a FRTP research fellow. After completing a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with Ed Kravitz in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School in 1973, he accepted a faculty position at Meharry Medical College. In the summer of 1974, he returned to the MBL as the coordinator of the FRTP program. Among the FRTP recruits in that year was Joe Martinez. Funding for the FRTP ended in 1974. From 1974 until 1986, Townsel’s career trajectory included a six year span,1978-1984, where he served as an associate dean in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois and the last four years as an associate vice chancellor. In 1984 he returned to Meharry Medical College to chair the Department of Physiology. In 1986 he returned to the MBL where joined Joe Martinez in launching the forerunner of the SPINES course. He has returned each year since. His personal commitment to providing educational opportunities to underrepresented minorities is reflected in the fact that he trained eight African American Ph.D’s. His longtime commitment to the SPINES program at the MBL has been consistent with his life-long commitment to increasing diversity in the biomedical workforce.
(Show less)

Mean distance: (not calculated yet)