Download a copy of the meeting program by clicking the
icon to the right. 
Schedule of Events:
March
15 Afternoon
Field Trip, Mixer
March
16 Student
Paper Competition and Contributed Papers
March
17 Symposium
The local coordinator for the meeting in Denton was Dr.
Kent Chapman, an Associate Professor of Biology
at UNT. Through his efforst the 2003 meeting
was a resounding success.
The
meeting was held in Denton Texas at the Radisson
Hotel and Eagle Point Golf Course (2211 I-35E North,
Denton, Texas 76205 [Telephone: (940) 565-8499 -
Fax: (940) 384-2244 - Reservations: (800) 333-3333]
The
hotel is adjacent to the University of North Texas,
and is
conveniently
located just 30 miles north of the Dallas Fort
Worth International Airport on Interstate 35.
Although the hotel does not provide
transportation to the DFW airport, several shuttle
services are available such as The Denton Airport
Shuttle (1-800-6343-6231).
Field
Trip
Our local coordinator Kent Chapman made arrangements
with Dr. Barney Lipscomb of the Botanical Research
Institute
of Texas (BRIT) for a field trip to that institution
on Saturday afternoon. The Biological Sciences Department
of UNT generously agreed to sponsor the trip and
provide transportation. We left the Radisson
Hotel
at 1:30 and return in time for the mixer.
The Botanical Research Institute of Texas (http://www.brit.org)
was incorporated in 1987 as a non-profit organization
to house the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Herbarium
and botanical library. An historic turn-of-the-century
warehouse at 509 Pecan Street in Ft. Worth was restored
to house library and plant collections, and BRIT was
opened to the public in 1991.
The collections represent the lifetime work of Lloyd
Shinners, one of the most influential Texas botanists
of the 20th century. The core of the library (about
75,000 volumes) is made up of the personal collections
of Lloyd Shinners and Eula Whitehouse and is rich in
literature on botany and horticulture from the 19th
century and the latter half of the 18th century. In
1997, Vanderbilt University donated its herbarium of
over 360,000 specimens to BRIT, and continuing additions
to the collection have brought the total number of specimens
housed at the institute to over one million. Don Smith
who helped coordinate the trip indicated that we will
be able to see a copy of Linaeus' 1753 book, Species
Plantarum.
BRIT is a nonprofit international botanical resource
center open to the public. Its mission is to conserve
our natural heritage by deepening our knowledge of the
plant world and achieving public understanding of the
value plants bring to life.
Symposium
We thank Dr. Ruth Grene for organizing the excellent
symposium on "Bioinformatics
for Comparative Genomics "
Invited speakers included:
