Carol Ann Paul

Carol Ann Paul is an instructor in the Neuroscience Program, having taught laboratories for many years, first at Williams College, then at Harvard University and finally here at Wellesley College where she started in 1983. She is continually involved in creating new and exciting laboratory experiences in neuroscience and physiology.

She graduated from Keele University, Staffs. England in 1970 with a B.A. (hons.) in biology and chemistry. She completed her M.S. degree in epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health in 2007.

She published a lab manual called Discovering Neurons, the Experimental Basis of Neuroscience in 1979.  Its mission was to disseminate information on laboratory exercises that are “state of the art” and work well at the undergraduate and graduate level.

She was awarded an National Science Foundation educational materials development grant in 2003, with Julio Ramirez of Davidson College and Bruce Johnson of Cornell University. They developed the Web site The Neuron Connection, which continues the work started in Discovering Neurons. The site can be found at: http://www.wellesley.edu/Biology/Concepts/Html/theneuronconnection.html.

Her interest in lab development is continuing with a new project for distribution of labs in neuroscience online with Sinauer Associates Inc.

For her master’s thesis from Boston University School of Public Health, she found an interesting correlation of drinking habits with brain volume. There appears to be no beneficial effect of drinking low quantities of alcohol on normal, age-related decline in brain volume; this is in contrast to the beneficial effects of low alcohol consumption in the cardio-vascular system. This work is published in Association of Alcohol Consumption with Brain Volume in the Framingham Study, Archives of Neurology, volume 65 (no.10), October 2008, pp 1363-1367.

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Profile last updated: 10/08