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College honors Elser with Distinguished Faculty Award

James J. Elser, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, is this year’s recipient of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Faculty Award. The award recognizes faculty members who exemplify the college’s mission of instructional excellence, special dedication to students and performance that makes an impact in the greater community or a professional field.

The award was presented Nov. 14, along with the college’s Hall of Fame Award and Distinguished Achievement Awards, as part of this year’s Homecoming Week festivities.

Elser is a limnologist and professor of biology. He is one of the world’s foremost authorities on applying the core chemical principle of elemental stoichiometry to biological systems. According to colleagues, from his initial work on freshwater ecosystems that focused on herbivorous zooplankton, Elser has moved on to make connections between key ecosystem element ratios and their roles in the processes that drive organismal development, tumor growth, microbial diversity in Mexico, grassland ecosystem function in Inner Mongolia, and nitrogen deposition in Colorado and Norway.

Elser has been able to apply his experimental and theoretical tools to new problems in ways that make a difference in the understanding of cancer, the effects of climate change and biodiversity.

He also is a co-principal investigator on the recently funded NASA astrobiology project “Follow the Elements.”

“Insight into the ecological and environmental forces that shape and eventually stabilized our own systems can do much to inform us about what is possible in other regions of the universe,” says Elser in discussing research in Cuatro Cienegas, Mexico.

Elser joined ASU in 1990. He is a core member of the Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Science faculty group in the School of Life Sciences. Since 2005, Elser has served as associate director of research and training initiatives in the school.

In his nearly two decades at ASU, Elser has taught introductory biology to almost 12,000 non-majors in a way that makes a difference in both their ability to reason carefully and in the way they understand the biological world. He has directly mentored 33 undergraduate students, 10 graduate students and 11 others in his laboratory.

Elser earned his doctoral degree in ecology from the University of California, Davis, in 1990. He received his master’s degree in ecology from the University of Tennessee in 1983 and his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Notre Dame in 1981.

The college also honored ASU alumnus William C. “Bill” Jenkins, a former Scottsdale mayor, now deceased, and Sue Jenkins, a former community relations liaison for Arizona Public Service, with this year’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame Award. The couple were recognized for their support of the humanities and the formative impact they have had in the college, in Scottsdale and in Arizona.

Three college graduates – Melinda Sue Gordon, Alonzo Jones and Patricia Kimball – received a Distinguished Achievement Award, which recognizes alumni, citizens of Arizona or others who contribute to the advancement of the college.