{"id":266,"date":"2017-12-03T04:22:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T04:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wcsu.wpengine.com\/sigma-xi\/?page_id=266"},"modified":"2018-02-06T15:22:55","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T15:22:55","slug":"frank-dye","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/sigma-xi\/frank-dye\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Dye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Frank Dye \u201963<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Connie Conway<\/span><\/p>\n

WestConn Professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences Dr. Frank Dye \u201963 was born in the Bronx, \u201cabout a block from Arthur Avenue,\u201d he says, \u201cwhere all the great Italian food is.\u201d Here a love of the Yankees was inherited, and a no-excuses attitude marked you even more than your accent did as a real New Yorker. His delight in pasta and his chosen team would stay with Dye throughout life; but an altogether different subject would ignite his imagination early and engage him far more profoundly. That subject was science. \u201cI\u2019d always loved observing animals and had pets,\u201d says Dye. He can pinpoint the moment when youthful interest became a fascination with living organisms in general. \u201cAn aunt gave me my first microscope. Once I put the slides under and saw the distinctive shapes of cells and realized what I was looking at, I became focused on biology.\u201d Cellular biology, to be precise. Eventually the family moved up from the Bronx to Putnam Lake, N.Y. The young enthusiast was only in junior high, but the die (no pun intended) had already been cast: even his non-science teachers knew of his deep interest in biology.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But money for college was an issue, so as graduation approached, Dye considered doing a stint in the Navy instead. Once more, fate stepped in: an English teacher told him, \u201cThere\u2019s a small but good college in Danbury that\u2019s affordable. They have a two-year lab technician program that could be of interest to you.\u201d This was Danbury State College, soon to become Western Connecticut State College. It offered an excellent faculty and a tuition rate today\u2019s students would describe as to die for: $50 per semester. Looking back, it was the right place for him in so many ways, says Dye. \u201cRuth Haas was still president. The campus was only a shadow of what it is now. But it was a truly nurturing institution with a dedicated administration. As a student, you knew your professors well and they knew you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dye stayed four years, earning his B.S. in secondary education – biology\/chemistry. He taught chemistry at Danbury High School for a year before taking a lab assistant\u2019s position at Rockefeller University. Fordham University had accepted him into its doctoral program as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pre-doctoral Fellow. He obtained a Ph.D. from Fordham in 1969. Previously, in 1967, he\u2019d started teaching at his alma mater, WestConn. \u201cIt was a place where students developed self-esteem,\u201d he says. \u201cA college where, if you applied yourself, you could go literally anywhere. It still is. Today, our biology students go on to many of the best medical schools and research institutions, like Tufts or the Ivy Leagues, to prepare for careers in science, teaching and medicine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dye is justly proud of that. His 42-year teaching tour at WestConn is the longest still running at the university. That same \u201cno excuses\u201d stance of his has gone a long way toward successfully preparing his students for the pragmatic, multi-faceted disciplines of science. \u201cSaturday labs with Dr. Dye were challenging,\u201d recalls Thomas A. Valluzzo, DMD, \u201971, whose periodontal practice is in Danbury. \u201cThey went from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., so there\u2019d be no partying Friday night.\u201d Valluzzo chuckles then adds seriously, \u201cThe fact is, Frank Dye was absolutely one of the best teachers I ever had.\u201d Cellular biology goes to the most fundamental building blocks of life. Dye\u2019s commitment to its study has been life-long and is reflected in the bounty of his research and writing, from peer-reviewed studies into \u201cThe in vitro movement of mammalian epithelial cells\u201d to books like the Dictionary of Developmental Biology and Embryology (published by John Wily & Sons in 2002).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dye has done research at UConn Health Center and Yale University, among others. Indeed, the body of work he has produced to-date is vast, yet as finely detailed as the biology of the cells he studies. The university\u2019s Westside Nature Preserve, of which Dye is the founding director, has been his project of a lifetime. Established in 1993, it has brought research, teaching and environmental concerns together in a green accomplishment of exceptional value to now-and-future students as well as to the university community as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Students<\/strong><\/p>\n