Public Lectures

This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Donald “Buzz” Wassenberg, a Master’s degree candidate at San Diego State University at the time of his death in 1986. He died of cystic fibrosis at the age of 26. Buzz was an outstanding individual, both personally and professionally. He displayed an enthusiasm about life that was not dampened by the severe medical problems he faced. His approach to science was innovative and generated excitement regarding new experimental ideas and results.

Buzz had completed his laboratory research in Dr. Sandy Bernstein’s laboratory and had begun writing his thesis before his death. SDSU awarded his Master’s degree posthumously at the spring 1987 graduation, where Dr. Bernstein presented the completed thesis and the degree to Buzz’s parents. This research was subsequently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. We have begun an endowment fund to honor his memory and inspire his peers and colleagues. This allows us to bring top investigators to SDSU to present recent advances in genetic disease research.

See the Wassenberg Lecture Series and Previous Speakers

Dr. James E. Crouch joined the San Diego State College faculty in 1932 and progressed through the various levels of teaching and faculty affairs to the position of Chairman of the Division of Life Sciences. Along the way, he served as Chairman of the Zoology Department, Faculty Chairman of the Senate, and President of the AAUP.

James Crouch started life in an academic environment, having been born on the campus of the University of Illinois while his father was the farm manager. He attended Cornell University for a master’s degree, where his thesis was on the natural history of the cedar waxwing. His Ph.D. was earned at the University of Southern California, where his dissertation was on the natural history of another bird, the phainopepla. His interest in ornithology and natural history made him a valuable staff member of the Audubon Society’s summer camps in California and Wyoming.

Much of Professor Crouch’s national reputation came from his ability to put life into his writing about human and comparative anatomy. Two of his laboratory manuals (including Functional Human Anatomy) enjoyed wide adoption across the country, and he also published a cat anatomy and two human anatomy texts for use in colleges and universities. His natural history movies have been shown at meetings of the National Audubon Society and of the Los Angeles, Pasadena, and San Diego Audubon Societies. Dr. Crouch retired in 1973 and died in 2000.

This lecture series was established in honor of Dr. Roger E. Carpenter and in honor of and memoriam for Dr. Theodore (Ted) J. Cohn. Both were professors of the Department of Biology at San Diego State University and made outstanding contributions to teaching and research.

Roger is a comparative physiologist in ecological and evolutionary physiology. Ted was an active insect systematist specializing in groups in the western US and Mexico.

This Carpenter-Cohn lecture, held annually each spring, highlights the research of a distinguished biologist whose integrative research perspective emphasizes major patterns and unifying themes in comparative biology.

See the Carpenter & Cohn Lecture Series and Previous Speakers