Dana L. Wrensch
Josephine Sitterle Failer Award
B.S. Biological Sciences, 1968
M.S. Molecular Genetics, 1970
Doctor of Philosophy, 1972
Aggression in spider mites. The ethics of gene manipulation. The community involvement of homecoming court candidates. Sex ratios in ticks. Junior Honor Society. All of these disparate topics interest Dana Wrensch, associate professor of entomology.
The Mississippi native holds three degrees from Ohio State and has been a valued member of the faculty since 1977 in the departments of entomology, botany, genetics, and zoology. She also has been a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral trainee in the university’s Acarology Laboratory. Acarology is the study of ticks and mites, which provide insights into biology and evolution and have practical applications in medicine, ecology, and agriculture. Ticks can cause Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme disease. Mites are found in many unusual places, from mattresses and bee nests to the nasal passages of hummingbirds.
Ohio State’s Acarology laboratory is one of the most diverse in the world. Its summer program is the longest-running and best-known program of its kind, attracting biologists and graduate students from around the globe. In 2000 Wrensch received the Acarology Recognition Award for 26 years of teaching in the program.
As director of the General Biology Program at Ohio State, she was responsible for supervising lab revisions and revising the curriculum of seven courses serving more than 7,000 students annually. Currently, she is developing interactive computer models using three-dimensional geometry and topology to teach plant and animal growth.
As for gene manipulation, that’s a topic that often comes up during meetings of a bioethics discussion group of which Wrensch is a member. She has said,"Gene manipulation gives us the ability to identify genetic problems and find simple, cheap, available-to-everyone remedies for them. Because of it, the day will likely come when no one has to be sick from a genetic disease or susceptible to cancer."
Always active in professional organizations, Wrensch serves as associate editor of the International Journal of Acarology and is a past president of the Acarological Society of America and OSU chapters of the American Association of University Professors and Sigma Xi, the scientific society. She also has been honored by the Council on Academic Excellence for Women. Perhaps one of Dana Wrensch’s most unusual honors is to have two species—and a family—of mites named for her. For an acarolgist, that’s like having a baseball stadium bear your name.
But it is Dana Wrensch’s extraordinary service to the university over three decades that has earned her the prestigious Failer Award. Wrensch has served on the Faculty Senate, as a faculty advisor to Chimes, and as an honorary faculty member for Bucket & Dipper. She has even interviewed homecoming court candidates and, in 2005, was an OMEGA Society honoree. It would be difficult to find an alumnus or faculty member with more dedication to Ohio State and its students. That is where she truly finds her value, she said.
“Hardly any of the research we do comes close to the impact we have on our undergraduates,” Wrensch said. “I hear back from old students all the time, I stay friends with students from decades past, and my own sense of worth and connection is most strongly enhanced by the accumulated experience of knowing so many aspiring, well-motivated young people.”
