CAS CONNECT 2016

OSU 125 TH ANNIVERSARY TIMELINE The late Dr. Ed Grula ( left) offered Tyrrel l Conway a spot in his lab, sparking the then-student’s love of microbiology. His wi fe, Mary (r ight), stepped in to help the department after Dr. Grula’s death. 4 Okla. He allowed the video crew to record some of the lectures in his rye fields, giving the course a true “on-loca- tion” feel. On-campus collaborations also made Brewing Microbiology a success. Conway is quick to credit A&S Outreach with promoting the class and the Institute for Teaching & Learning Excellence with providing the technical talent and exper- tise to produce a quality online product. “The university resources have been great,” Conway says. “They think of things from the student’s perspective.” Help also came within the department from first-year postdoctoral associate Jerreme Jackson. He handled much of the lab work, which often commanded two or three days of prep before the lecture could be recorded. “I can’t put into words how much groundwork goes into making a course available online for anyone in the world,” Jackson says. LEARNING You might think a professor with Conway’s years of experience and level of expertise would be content to spit out a lecture and call it day. However, Conway took on the project to be a student himself. “The MOOC has been a labor of love because I get to study,” he says. “I am having the most fun when I’m learning something new.” That love of learning began in earnest his senior year at OSU. The late Dr. Ed Grula offered a spot in his lab, and Conway jumped at the chance. “Big Ed” passed away at age 54 while Conway was still a graduate student, but the beloved professor left a huge impact on the department. So did his wife, Mary. “She was an amazing, brilliant, strong, sweet woman,” Conway says. He recalls her stepping in to try to pick up the pieces in the department just two weeks after Big Ed passed. Grula’s legacy lives on today, thanks to a graduate fellowship he started at OSU. One of his first Ph.D. students, John Whitney, completed the endowment on that fellowship. Whitney retired as vice president of the Eli Lilly and Co. research labs and was honored as the 2016 Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumni for Microbiology. Conway stayed in academia. He secured a postdoctoral position at the University of Florida, where he received the U.S. Patent Office’s 5 millionth patent (for creating recombinant E. coli that made ethanol) — a notable enough event that CNN found time around its Desert Storm coverage for a report. The University of Nebraska hired Conway out of Florida and granted him tenure. He moved on to Ohio State University before returning to Oklahoma at the other Big XII institution. That move shocked family members; his broth- ers, aunts, uncles and father all graduated from Oklahoma State.