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Since 1996, the Lab's name has been used to arouse the reader's curiosity and to convey our assertion that good visual design is as much science as it is art.
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So, what's the meaning of the name: 15º Laboratory? It has been experimentally determined that individuals prefer to view objects that lie between 0° to 15° below the imaginary horizontal line that represents their own eye level (Note: when standing, mean eye level is 59" for females and 64" for males).
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We hope the name illustrates that the Laboratory applies sound principles of visual perception, visual cognition, science learning theory, and knowledge representation to its research and development of visual instructional approaches that improve students' science learning and public understanding of the life sciences.
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The Laboratory has always had a special interest in improving students' understanding of plant science (botany) and geobotany.
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One biological topic area that the Laboratory has investigated in some depth is photosynthesis and the carbon cycle--paying particular attention to students' conceptual difficulties in understanding how plants make and use food.
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This work led to the Lab's involvement in consulting, research, and videography for the Private Universe Project televison series produced at Harvard University, and the MindWorks television series produced at KCET-TV in Los Angeles by the Southwest Regional Laboratory (WestEd).
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It has also led to invited lectures given by Lab Director Jim Wandersee at such sites as the Royal Botanic Gardens--Kew, Chelsea Physic Garden, the Linnean Society of London, US Center for Plant Conservation, New England Wildflower Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, BGCI's 6th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens at Oxford University, the 17th International Botanical Congress--Vienna, Austria, and BGCI's 7th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens held in Durban, South Africa.
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Lab Founder Jim Wandersee and Dr. Marshall Sundberg of Emporia State University co-taught a 4-hour Botanical Society of America "Advances in Teaching Botany" short course" for plant biologists worldwide at the Joint Congress on Plant Biology and Botany in Chicago, IL and presented a "Qualitative Research in Botany Education" symposium for BSA in Mobile, AL. Drs. Sundberg, Wandersee, and M. Weigand (Germany) organized a world symposium on "Building Botanical Literacy" for the 2005 International Botanical Congress in Vienna, Austria.
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The Laboratory has undertaken a leading and original role in documenting and trumpeting the public's plant blindness, and the need for greater emphasis on plant biology in building EVERY biology student's foundational knowledge of biology and on improving the PUBLIC's botanical literacy.
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It continues to research, demonstrate, and promote the importance of plants in human affairs and life in the biosphere.
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In the late 1990's, Dr. Jim Wandersee and Dr. E. E. Schussler coined and introduced the term plant blindness to the plant science community to characterize the current lack of awareness of plants in 1st-world (developed) countries, and pointed out the underemphasis of plants in life science instruction--both formal and informal. The Lab's campaign to improve public awareness and understanding of plants was endorsed by the Botanical Society of America.
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Since 2003, Dr. Jim Wandersee and his research partner, Dr. Renee Clary of Mississippi State University, served as the science signage consultants for the Doris I. Schnuck Children's Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. They were featured invited speakers at the 6th BGCI International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens at Oxford University, UK. In 2009. they co-taught two short courses on "Scientific Knowledge Representation and Integration" to 100 wetland scientists from Southeast Asia (China, Laos, Thailand, Viet Nam, Cambodia) at the USGS 2009 DRAGON Asia Summit meeting held in Siem Reap, Cambodia on the Mekong River. In 2010, they presented an invited public lecture on Plant Blindness at the Singapore Botanic Gardens national park for the Republic of Singapore.
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Dr. Wandersee retired from his full-time Alumni Professorship at LSU in August of 2012 and was a professor emeritus until his death on January 24, 2014.
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Dr. Renee Clary serves as the current Director, and is a Professor of Geosciences and Director of the Dunn-Seiler Museum at Mississippi State University.