May 1, 2003

Despite an early interest in music that continues today, Stephen Ragsdale, a UNL professor of biochemistry, knew at a young age that work in a science lab was his calling. This year, Ragsdale has received a Bessey Professorship and is a recipient of the universitywide award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity. Photo by Richard Wright.

For Ragsdale, there's still much work to do

ORCA winner is passionate about research and the university's future

Note: This is the third in a three-part series about the UNL winners of the 2003 University of Nebraska Outstanding Research and Creative Activity and Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity awards.

By Kelly Bartling, University Communications

Some scientific breakthroughs happen when something goes awry.

For Stephen Ragsdale, UNL professor of biochemistry, his lab's most recent major discovery happened just that way.

"It's so absolutely exciting to get the wrong answer. That's something people don't realize about science," said Ragsdale, remembering his research team's new finding of copper in a protein. "You've been working along on a project and you think you understand it all, and you set up your experiment to test your hypothesis and then you suddenly realize that it's completely wrong. And then it's exciting."

That discovery last summer (with research assistant professor Javier Seravalli, former grad student Tzanko Doukov and MIT professor Cathy Drennan) of nickel, iron and copper in a "supercluster" in the crystallized protein necessary for enabling microbial life on carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide led to a paper published in Science, numerous invitations to conferences, new papers in other journals like the PNAS, and articles in Chemical and Engineering News.

And it ultimately contributed to Ragsdale's selection as a 2003 winner of the universitywide award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity.

"With respect to this issue, with copper, my first response was 'There's no way!'" Ragsdale said laughing at his so-called "Eureka!" moment. "'There's no way that copper is in this protein.' You don't realize how many things are inconsistent until you find a major inconsistency and then you start rebuilding, and then it becomes really exciting."

Earning the ORCA award this spring capped a great year for Ragsdale, who, along with co-authoring the Science paper, earlier this month earned an acclaimed Bessey Professorship.

He is taking it all in stride, seeming hesitant to stop and reflect in his office in the UNL Beadle Center, excited about all the work left to be done. He's proud of his research team and cognizant of the possibility that his work can help solve complex problems like global warming.

"My long-term goals with most of the science going on in our laboratory revolves around microbes and how they interact with the environment and how we can possibly use them," Ragsdale said. "In a sense, they're helping to filter our environment. For the last four billion years, microbes have been controlling the composition of our atmosphere. Because of domestication of cattle we have a lot of methane, and that contributes to the greenhouse effect. Some of the microbes we work on will detoxify carbon monoxide, other microbes will degrade toxic organics, and we are studying how methane is made, and in a separate project, to find a way to lower methane concentrations on Earth. My science is directed in a very general sense to trying to impact these problems."

Before Ragsdale's personal "Eureka!" that he wanted to be a biochemist, he was actually somewhat of a vagabond musician, playing bar and coffeehouse gigs around Washington, D.C., and protesting the Vietnam War. He grew up at the foothills of the Appalachians, at Rome, Ga., and always loved science and drawing organic chemical structures, but enjoyed the creative outlet of music. He put his guitar away for a while, though, and started his science studies at the University of Georgia, where he at first thought he wanted to be a physician.

"When I was an undergraduate at Georgia I had a really lucky experience. I was paying my way through college and I needed a job. There was a fellow from my hometown, from the same church Marion Bradford, and I saw him one day and I asked him 'Can I come and work in your lab?' and he said 'yes.' It really took about two days in the lab until I said, 'This is where you find out, doing science, how things work.' I just really loved it."

Working in the lab (Bradford created a process called the Bradford Protein Assay), and later with world-known researchers Lars Ljungdahl and Harland Wood, who discovered the Wood-Ljungdahl Pathway, Ragsdale quickly earned the attention of colleagues. Since beginning his scientific career in 1983, he has published more than 100 scientific articles, been awarded more than $7 million in research funds and even had a bacterium named after him, Clostridium ragsdalii. He still enjoys playing guitar, piano and violin with his two children and his friends, but he doesn't regret his decision to pursue biochemistry.

"It was very clear whatever I did, I wanted to do something that my heart was into. I think I would have kept searching around until I found this, and maybe there would have been another way to get on this path. I would imagine, that if anybody's looking to do something they really want to do they'll find it."

After earning his doctorate at Georgia, working as a postdoc at Case Western Reserve University and serving an assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Ragsdale joined UNL in 1991 with his wife and colleague, Ruma Banerjee. His research interfaces chemistry and biology and includes collaborations with scientists around the world. He is enthusiastic about his research team, including graduate student Razvan Dumitru and UNL professors Jess Miner and Jim Takacs, which is researching inhibiting methane production, and about the new $10-million UNL Center for Redox Biology, headed by Banerjee.

"The Redox Biology Center is a really wonderful opportunity, especially for the young people associated with it," he said. "It's very good for the university at a time when we're seeing a loss of funding in programs."

Ragsdale is also passionate about the future of the entire university, and recently decided to use his ORCA award to put some heft behind his voice. In a recent letter to the editor, he pleaded for the continued support of higher education and the university's research, and pointed out that a 2001 ORCA awardee is today part of a program targeted for budget cuts.

"I have some concerns about relating this budget issue," he said. "I won the ORCA award and there's some political benefit in that award. I've written to the governor and I want the legislators to know that we at the university community are very concerned and we'll do what we can to try to recoup from all that's been cast on us. (But) what they're doing has very negative and very long-term effects on the future of the university and on people of the state."

Ragsdale and his family decided together, the night he learned of earning the ORCA, that they should donate the stipend to the Budget Reduction Impact Fund as a statement of support for the university.

"I don't want it to seem like a budding philanthropist, but this is important," he said. "It's is a small token that may have political benefit, but I just want the governor and the legislators to say 'OK, the people at the university are a community and they care about what they do.'"

Website answers budget questions

This e-mail was sent to all faculty and staff by Chancellor Harvey Perlman on April 24:

Dear Colleagues,

As we labor with the uncertainty of our budget circumstances and are forced to read daily the debates in the Legislature that can have such an immediate impact on our future, it would be easy to be distracted from the important work we do. I continue to be proud of the way you are continuing to conduct the important business of the university and of the number of very exciting and positive achievements by programs and individuals. I applaud you for your persistence in the face of these uncertainties.

Recently the Academic Planning Committee asked that I respond to a number of questions they had about the proposed budget reductions, and about other alternatives that might be considered instead of the proposed reductions. It occurred to me that many of you may have similar questions and would be interested in my answers. A document, "Responses to Questions of the Academic Planning Committee, April 2003" is now on the Office of the Chancellor website under the link "Budget Documents, 2003-05 Biennium."

The direct address is <www.unl.edu/pr/chancllr/2003-5budget/documents/20030422/>.

The APC asked about the proportionality of the cuts, both imposed and proposed, between administration and academic programs. We had actually never totaled these numbers although we have tried to be protective of academic programs. The total surprised me. Of all the cuts adopted or proposed through four rounds of reductions, academic programs have incurred 26 percent, service programs 25 percent, and administration 49 percent. Granted, it is not always easy to classify some of the reductions, but I think these numbers illustrate that we have made a fair effort to have the administration bear a disproportionate share of the reductions. I continue to remain concerned about our ability to manage the university in the years ahead given these reductions, but they were preferable to cuts in academic and service programs. Nonetheless, if we are forced to make additional reductions, there is little room left on the administrative side of the university.

Again, we are watching the legislative process carefully and are prepared to announce further budget reductions if it seems appropriate to do so. I will give you as much notice as is possible under the circumstances if this becomes a reality.

Harvey

NETV wins Peabody Award for Monkey Trial

The Nebraska ETV Network has received a 2003 George Foster Peabody Award, considered one of the most prestigious media awards in the country.

Monkey Trial, a production of the Nebraska ETV Network for the Public Broadcasting Service series "American Experience," was one of 31 programs honored. The awards citation for Monkey Trial stated: "A lesson in why we must not take history for granted, this documentary presents a thoroughly new perspective on the Scopes Trial, one of the most significant events in 20th century America."

Monkey Trial tells the real story of the 1925 trial in which John Scopes was prosecuting for violating Tennessee's law against teaching evolution.

Peabody Awards recognize distinguished achievement and meritorious service by radio and television networks, stations, producing organizations, cable television organizations and individuals. The 62nd annual awards for excellence in electronic media were announced April 2.

Nebraska ETV executive producer Christine Lesiak also recently received a national Writers Guild Award for outstanding achievement in writing for television for the script for Monkey Trial. Other NETV staff who worked on the Monkey Trial production include co-producer Annie Mumgaard and editor Alex Moscu; John Beck, additional photography and Steadicam; Steven Gottlieb and Dan Burger, location sound; Foster Collins, gaffer; Kay Hall and Kelly Rush, production assistants; Scott Beachler and Lisa Craig, graphics; and Doug Carlson, post production editor.

This is the third time Nebraska ETV has won a Peabody Award. The first was in 1981 for a dramatization of the Mark Twain story, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. Reading Rainbow, a GPN/Nebraska ETV co-production with WNED-Buffalo, won the award in 1993 for the episode "The Wall."

Charles Gibson will present the 62nd George Foster Peabody Awards on May 19 in New York. The A&E Network will air the Peabody Awards ceremony in June.

Administered by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, the Peabody Awards differ from other electronic media awards because they are given solely on the basis of merit, rather than within designated categories. Judging is done by a 15-person board whose members include TV critics, broadcast and cable industry executives, scholars and experts in culture and fine arts.