Harry R. Matthews

Professor of Biological Chemistry, School of Medicine

My previous service activities at the Campus level have included being member and chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel, chair of the Graduate Group in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and chair of the Committee on Elections, Rules and Jurisdiction. Computer-related Campus activities include being a current member of the Arbor Advisory Board and a member of the Advisory Board for the Summer Institute on Technology in Teaching (1995-97). Off-Campus, I have been a Harvard-Macy Scholar, I have served 5 years on the American Cancer Society's Personnel Advisory Committee and I am currently a member of the advisory board for the Research Infrastructure for Minority Institutions program at San Francisco State University.

My research, in recent years, has been on protein kinases, an area of molecular biology that is concerned with intracellular signaling at the molecular level. There is a comprehensive review of this work (Matthews, H.R., 1995, "Protein Kinases and Phosphatases That Act on Histidine, Lysine or Arginine Residues in Eukaryotic Proteins: A Possible Regulator of the MAP Kinase Cascade". Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 67, 323-350). I am a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

My teaching includes undergraduate, graduate and professional courses. For first-year medical students I teach the fundamentals of protein structure and function from a medical perspective and this course has been a pioneer in the application of technology to teaching and learning. In Fall 1997, the 23 lectures were reconstructed on CD-ROM and the physical lectures discontinued. I met with the students in small groups where we focused on developing their critical thinking skills. The results of that approach were encouraging and preparations are underway to repeat this approach in Fall 1998. The new version of the "virtual lectures" uses a database to integrate the material and provide additional services to students. Some aspects of these innovations have been published and presented at meetings and invited seminars. Together with two colleagues, I have published a textbook (Matthews et al., 1997, Biochemistry -- A Short Course, Wiley).