Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2013 | Page 55

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Dr. Scott at work in the lab at the Universidad de
Costa Rica (UCR). (inset, left) The biology building at
UCR. (left) On a field trip with a colleague, Dr. Scott
holds a baby sloth.

Project 1 In his first project,
Dr. Scott examined the DNA of two
species of freshwater turtles to evaluate
how closely the two species are related
to one another. In the past and among
some scientists still today, the two
species were considered to be different
subspecies of a single species. Dr. Scott
recently received the DNA samples he
collected in Costa Rica (after a long
wait to obtain the necessary permits
to have them shipped), and he hopes
to complete this project by the end
of summer in 2013. He says, “These
freshwater turtles have never been
studied this way, and even though
Costa Rica is still a very natural place,
there’s a lot of development going
on. Scientists need to be able to
figure out in more detail what genetic
conditions exist in populations of all
sorts of animals in Costa Rica.”

Project 2 The second project
involves trying to identify genetic
markers that will function with nine
freshwater turtle species in Costa
Rica. UCR colleagues will collect
specimens from turtles in Costa
Rican zoos and forward those DNA
samples to Dr. Scott who plans on
having Wheaton students help test the
samples. He hopes to have sufficient
results to publish a small paper on the
study in the next two years. Looking
at what molecular markers will work
with these species “will open the door
for me, some of my students, and
even the wider community to do
work that hasn’t been done before,”
he says.

Project 3 Dr. Scott’s third
project developed organically. A UCR
graduate student was extracting DNA
from macaw feathers. A Fulbright grant
student at a different location who was
working on a project with toucans
e-mailed Dr. Scott to see if he had any
use for the leftover toucan feathers.
Dr. Scott and the UCR graduate student
gathered molecular markers that have
been shown to work in woodpeckers
and started testing those on the toucan
DNA. Dr. Scott is serving as a consultant
on the project that is still in development
stages, but has yielded some promising
results. He hopes this project will
conclude in the next year or two, and
he plans to contribute to writing the
results for publication.
Before heading to Costa
Rica, Dr. Scott contacted a number of
biological supply companies and secured
more than $10,000 worth of donations of
chemical reagents and equipment vital to
his work. Getting the donated supplies to
Costa Rica proved to be a more creative
task: connecting with Wheaton alumni
working in a Christian school in Costa
Rica to pick up supplies that were dropped
off by a missions team from College
Church, and picking up items from the
American Embassy. Dr. Scott donated all
the leftover supplies to UCR, including
a PCR thermal cycler used to amplify
DNA. “Here at Wheaton it’s something
that’s really not hard for us to come by,” he
says. “But in Costa Rica the programs are
not well supported, so it really felt good to
be able to leave something that would help
that lab be more productive.”

While on the trip, Dr. Scott also visited
the University of Georgia field station at
Monteverde and lectured at the Whitworth
University Costa Rica Center, catching
up with former Wheaton faculty member
Dr. Lindy Scott who now serves as a
director at Whitworth. While at the two
campuses, Dr. Scott hoped to find out
ways Wheaton might interact with the
institutions in the future. After dis covering
that Wheaton’s Spanish department will use
the Whitworth campus for the Wheaton in
Costa Rica trip in May 2013, Dr. Scott is
now working to see if he might take several
biology students on that trip as well.
Back at Wheaton, Dr. Scott appreciates
being able to bring a deeper level of enthusiasm into the classroom. Reflecting on the
trip he says, “At different steps along the way,
there were choices that I made and things I
pursued that, for whatever reason, I feel as
though God was at work directing me.”
The opportunity to work in another
culture sparked fresh insights. He says,
“In Costa Rica, a lot of times things don’t go
according to plan. A machine breaks down
that’s crucial to your research, and you just
have to wait and see what’s going to happen.
“I think in Western culture we find
ourselves often trying to live our lives as
though we have control over everything,”
he says, adding that he appreciates these
“good lessons.”
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