As a young boy growing up in Oklahoma I was fascinated by science.  Stones, animals and plants could hold my attention for hours as I explored the creeks and rocky fields in the eastern part of the state.   As I grew older, sports replaced science in my daily life and I found little time to devote to my childhood curiosity.  I think part of this was the schooling, as science never seemed to come alive in school as it did in the country.  Soon came college and work in the oil business.  After being transferred to California I started tutoring students in East Palo Alto in math and science.  The students needed help and I found much pleasure and sense of satisfaction in providing it.  I did not realize it then but this was the beginning of a new career.

Three years later I left the oil business and enrolled in my first biology class. However, the transforming experience was the 1978 summer I spent as a second year graduate student at the Marine Biology Laboratories at Woods Hole.  We listened to lectures each morning and then headed to the lab for the rest of the day to work on a project we designed.  We often spent afternoons at the beach but the lab was busy past midnight and I was caught up in the excitement of work, the environment and the people.  I returned to my studies renewed and two years later had completed my studies.

In 1982 I came to Stony Brook University and by the early nineties was looking to alter my career path towards some of the things that gave me pleasure earlier in life.  In 1993 I had the opportunity to write a National Institutes of Health Bridges to the Baccalaureate grant, which would provide research and educational opportunities for underrepresented community college students interested in science careers.  This resonated with my new goals and the next year I received the grant and have not looked back.  In 1994 I received the first of several four year grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and two years later one from the National Science Foundation.  All had similar goals; bring outstanding opportunities in science to as many young people as possible especially those who had not previously had these opportunities.

In 1996, I created LIGASE (Long Island Group Advancing Science Education) as the umbrella organization for all of our efforts.  LIGASE became more successful than I could have imagined as we continued to receive grants and move in new directions and by 2002 we had programs from grade school to the graduate and faculty levels.  In 2004 we began to direct all science teacher education programs and this opened my eyes to the growing need for more outstanding teachers in our schools. 

In 2007 we incorporated mathematics education into our work as I became the founding director of Stony Brook’s new Center for Science and Mathematics Education.  The timely creation of the Center resonated with the growing national awareness, and need, to improve science and mathematics education.  We now graduate more than fifty students a year with masters degrees in teaching these subjects, and they teach in our schools, and often continue to work at Stony Brook during the summer.

In many ways, I have tried to make a Woods Hole experience available to all students and teachers I’ve encountered, and in doing so recaptured much of my earlier wonder and excitement.   I now find many pleasures – work, golf, poker, music, gardening, travel – but the greatest are my three grown children and two grandchildren.  The only problem is, as I tell my students: if you want to have a long life, then do something that you don’t enjoy.  Fortunately, I have not taken my own advice.

Tel:  631-632-9750
Fax:  631-632-9791
E-mail:  r.bynum@stonybrook.edu