Dr. Lucile McCook

Academic Advisor
Curator of the Pullen Herbarium
Department of Biology
The University of Mississippi

Contact:

Office: 407B Shoemaker Hall
E-mail: bymccook@olemiss.edu
Telephone: (662) 915-5488
FAX: (662) 915-5144

The Pullen Herbarium:

I became Curator in 1998 and was awarded a 3-year National Science Foundation, Biological Research Collections, grant in 2001 to modernize and upgrade the plant collection and to database all collection information. Data from the ca 75,000 specimens in the Pullen Herbarium are available through our webpage (www.herbarium.olemiss.edu), as is the preliminary checklist of the plants of Mississippi (McCook and Kartesz, 2000).

In 2012, our Consortium of Mississippi Herbaria received a 5-year NSF grant to pool all Mississippi and SE US herbarium data into one searchable web portal, including images and georeferenced data for all Mississippi collections. While still a work in progress, our collections are searchable on the SERNEC website: http://sernecportal.org/portal/index.php

Biology Bootcamp:

I am Director of the University of Mississippi Biology Bootcamp, which is a 5 day intensive academic program to prepare freshmen to succeed in freshman biology for science majors, BISC 160 & 162, and beyond. The program occurs the week before classes begin each fall and is only for entering freshmen who are enrolled in BISC 160.

The week of Biology Bootcamp includes lectures, exams, labs, test analysis & study skills workshops, all presented by faculty and staff from the UM Department of Biology. For one brief but intensive week, students can experience taking a full load of classes with exams and all the other activities of campus life—before actually starting the semester. They also meet other students and create study groups for the fall semester, and many continue to interact throughout the school year with the Mentor that they met during Bootcamp. Every year, the average final grade of Bootcamp participants has been higher than the average grade of non-participants. In 2014, the average grade of students that completed Bootcamp was one letter grade higher than students that did not participate!

Students enroll in Biology Bootcamp when they visit the University for Freshman Orientation. For more information, visit: https://www.olemiss.edu/programs/biobootcamp/

Courses I Teach:

I started teaching Botany and non-majors Biology at The University of Mississippi in 1993 and taught freshman Biology for science majors (BISC 160 & 162) for 15 years. Currently, I teach a graduate level Plant Taxonomy course (BISC 532) and will begin teaching non-majors Biology again in 2016.

Education & Training:

Ph.D. (Plant Systematics) Bailey Hortorium, Cornell University. 1989.
M.S. (Biology) University of New Orleans. 1982.
B.S. (Horticultural Science) Louisiana State University. 1976.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Botany Department of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. 1989 & 1990.

Horticultural Taxonomist and Curator of Living Plants, Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. 1991 & 1992.

Publications:

McCook, L.M., and J. Kartesz. 2000. A preliminary checklist of the plants of Mississippi. Website: www.herbarium.olemiss.edu

McCook, L.M. 1998. An annotated checklist of the genus Phragmipedium, the New World conduplicate- leaved slipper orchids. Orchid Digest 62(4; special pub.): 1-11.

Goldblatt, P., P. Hoch & L. McCook. 1993. Documenting scientific data: the need for voucher specimens. Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 79(4): 608-609.

McCook, L.M. 1990. The genus Phragmipedium–Part II. Amer. Orchid Soc. Bull. 59(2): 153-158.

McCook, L.M. 1989. The genus Phragmipedium–Part I. Amer. Orchid Soc. Bull. 58(11): 1095-1100.