Administrative Service: Down to a Science
Professor of Biology Philip Meneely assumes a new role as Haverford’s associate provost.

If you look at any Haverford committee roster from the past few years, you’re likely to find Professor of Biology Philip Meneely’s name. He’s served as the natural sciences’ representative on Academic Council, the Academic Council’s representative on the College Planning Committee, interim director of the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center, chair of the biology department, and director of Haverford’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute program, which funds biomedical research, faculty development, and science education at colleges around the country. In the latter position, Meneely advocated courses and workshops for faculty members: “It’s a question of, how do you keep getting better once you’re here? We needed to bring faculty together to learn from each other.” Meneely now gets to tackle this question from a different perspective as the new associate provost of the College.

Although he’s accumulated many years of administrative service, the Punxsutawney, Pa. (he’s only the town’s second most famous Phil) native’s first love remains research, specifically in the area of genetics. “It lets you think about where things come from, what gets people from one generation to the next,” he says. “It brings up the question, ‘What is the meaning of existence?’” He received his bachelor’s degree from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa., in 1975, and went on to receive a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 1980.
In graduate school he began working with the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, also known as C. elegans, and in doing so became something of a pioneer. “When we started working with C. elegans, there were 12 labs in the world using it, and 77 people total,” he says. “Now there are over 3,000 scientists studying it, but I’m proud to have been one of the first 77.”

“He was very committed, very hard-working,” says Meneely’s graduate advisor, University of Minnesota Professor of Genetics Robert Herman, with whom Meneely still keeps in touch. “It’s part of his nature to have a strong work ethic.”
Meneely continued working with C. elegans from 1980-84 during his postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He focused on sex determination, studying the traits that make the X chromosome distinctive from all others. “Humans have 46 chromosomes,” he explains, “and of these, 44 are unremarkable, and then you have the X and Y. The function of the X chromosome is to determine the sex of that animal.” There are many ways in which the X distinguishes itself from its fellow chromosomes, says Meneely: “For instance, in humans, only a few of the X chromosome’s thousands of genes have anything to do with the difference between males and females.”
He carried this research over into his position as a faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, which he joined in 1985. The ‘Hutch’ is one of the leading cancer research and treatment centers in the world. “The great thing about the Center is their policy of inviting faculty members to work on whatever project they liked, and later they’d figure out how it related to cancer research,” he says. “Since cancer is caused by a breakdown in the processes of the cell, if you understand more about these processes in normal cells, you understand what can go wrong in cancer cells.” Meneely’s projects were not directly part of the Center’s cancer studies, but this experience gave him a chance to work with some of the leading molecular biologists in the world.

Meneely came to Haverford in 1995, spurred by a desire to work more directly with students. “When I interviewed with (Professor of Biology) Judy Owen, I felt immediately that this was a person who would be a great friend and colleague,” he recalls. “We had a common vision of undergraduate science education.”

Owen was impressed that Meneely had taken every available opportunity to involve students in his work at the Fred Hutchinson Center, where he had also organized an active summer research program. “His educational philosophy meshed beautifully with ours, in that he liked the department's approach to biology through the study of molecules and cells and with extensive student involvement in research,” she says. “He was thoughtful about curriculum development issues and clearly had the experience that we needed in a senior appointee.”

Since he’s been at Haverford, Meneely’s research has centered on meiosis, a fundamental biological process of all organisms that have a nucleus and chromosomes: “We have 46 chromosomes, and when we make sperm or eggs we put
23 of these into the egg cell for offspring.” Every human being has 23 pairs of
chromosomes—two copies each—and Meneely examines the ways in which each chromosome finds its partner within a cell. He compares this pairing to a zipper, which comes together at one place before closing up. When a zipper fails, it is often in one of two ways: either the two pieces are unable to come together or it falls apart after it closes. “Meiosis fails in much the same way,” says Meneely, “usually because the paired chromosomes fall apart early in the process.” Errors in meiosis may lead to complications for pregnant women: Too many copies of chromosome 21 could result in the baby’s having Down syndrome, but too few copies of any chromosome may lead to a very early miscarriage.Meneely still uses C. elegans in his projects. “It’s inexpensive, easy to grow in a laboratory, and develops quickly,” he says. The worm is so popular among biologists, he explains, that when scientists first considered sequencing the human genome, they turned to C. elegans to develop the techniques for high-throughput sequencing and dealing with large volumes of data: “It’s the first animal to have its DNA completely sequenced.”

He involves Haverford students—whom he describes as “intellectually fearless”—in his research whenever he can. Last summer, Ann Cooper ’06 was one of six students who worked in Meneely’s lab; she studied a meiotic protein called him-5 which is believed to regulate the number and distribution of pairing events on the X chromosome in C. elegans. “I had a wonderful experience working with Phil,” she says. “His teaching style is one that strongly promotes independent thinking. Rather than providing direct answers to our questions, he often asks us more questions in return, a method that enables us to develop problem-solving skills and tackle scientific problems thoroughly.”

In addition to his Haverford responsibilities, Meneely has served on an American Cancer Society advisory panel in developmental biology, a National Institutes of Health review panel for genetics, and numerous review panels for the National Science Foundation. During the seemingly rare times he’s not working, he goes home to Ardmore, where he lives with his wife, Deb, a librarian at the Newtown Square Public Library, and his oldest daughter Alison, a recent graduate of Franklin & Marshall College who now attends nursing school at Harcum College in Bryn Mawr. (He and Alison share the lifelong experience of informing the world that one’s name is spelled with only one ‘l.’) His son, Andy, is entering his senior year at Calvin College in Michigan.

Considering his role as associate provost, Meneely plans to support Provost J. David Dawson in any way he can, examine what works and what doesn’t about the way the office is run, help fellow faculty members better understand the decisions made by the provost, and—most importantly—not screw up. There’s a “Far Side” cartoon, he says, that perfectly illustrates this last hope: It depicts a woefully unprepared orchestra percussionist, about to perform with only one cymbal. His only thought: “Don’t screw up. Don’t screw up.”

“I feel the same way,” Meneely laughs.