FSU Feting Dr. Valeria Fleming

Fayetteville State University is throwing a seriously scientific party for one of its prized scientists this Friday.

Valeria Fleming, Ph.D., who has served FSU as a biology and biotechnology professor for 50 years, is to be honored with a free public science colloquium, Biology/Biotechnology: Linking the Past to the Future for our Students. It's at 2 p.m. in the campus' Seabrook Auditorium.

Fleming is credited with developing the university's biotechnology program, aided by some $1.3 million in grants from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center from 1992 through 2002.

The Biotechnology Center issued a $46,306 Educational Enhancement Grant to FSU in 1992 to help Fleming set up the university's first undergraduate biotech lab.

Since then, the Biotechnology Center issued 54 grants valued at nearly $9 million through a special program targeting historically minority universities across the state. More than $43,000 of that funding supported lectureships on biology and biotech.

Friday's event features a panel of experts discussing the evolution of biology and biotechnology and the resulting effects on daily life -- health, foods and the environment.

The panelists will also discuss the implications of biotechnology on future careers for today's students. The panel includes three biology educators and researchers and a medical doctor who was one of Fleming's students.

They are:

  • Antonio Baines, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology and cancer research program at North Carolina Central University and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
  • Goldie Byrd, Ph.D., the Nathan F. Simms Endowed Professor of Biology at North Carolina A&T State University
  • Melvin Echols, M.D., a fourth-year cardiovascular disease fellow at the Duke University School of Medicine and a 1995 FSU alumnus
  • Leslie Lerea, Ph.D., FSU associate dean for student affairs in the Graduate School and director of the SPIRE Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at UNC - Chapel Hill
  • Joseph Johnson, Ph.D., professor of educational leadership in the FSU School of Education, will moderate the event. He earned his bachelor's degree in biology at FSU in 1968 and was also one of Fleming's students.

More information on the colloquium is available by calling the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at (910) 672-1460.

Historically Minority University Bioscience/Biotechnology Grants to FSU

1995: A $313,647.58 grant helped establish the biotech program at FSU
1996: A $154,477.19 grant helped strengthen the FSU biotech program
1997: A $120,079.60 grant further enhanced the FSU biotech program
1998: A $232,772.18 grant continued enhancement of the FSU biotech program
1999: A $142,429.60 Phase II grant continued enhancing the program
2000: A $108,476.95 program-extension grant
2001: A $153,241.45 program-extension grant
2002: A $500 grant for the Eleanor Nunn Lectureship

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