Faculty biography - James Godde
Click to read Professor Godde's Tanzania blog.
As a molecular biologist with an expertise in DNA structure and an interest in biological diversity, James Godde has thrown off the fetters that would normally keep him tied to a lab bench and has instead been dedicated to experiential learning in biodiversity. Professor Godde has recently returned from a train trip across the U.S. in search of extremophiles, microbes that thrive in extreme environments. The trip, deemed “Monmouth College on the Rails,” included stops at the Great Salt Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Mono Lake in California, as well as a gold mine in Colorado. These locations were all sampled by the nine students who accompanied Godde, along with another faculty member at Monmouth, for halophilic (salt-loving), thermophilic (heat-loving), alkalophilic (base-loving), and acidophilic microbes, respectively. Work is continuing in professor Godde’s lab to characterize the organisms which were found to inhabit the above locations. Prior trips that professor Godde has taken with students include Costa Rica (2009) as well as Japan (2006), the latter of which was taken in conjunction with his preparations to spend a sabbatical in the Division of Gene Therapy Science at Osaka University Medical School. Other preparations for this 2007 sabbatical included the professor becoming a student once again and taking two years of Japanese courses at Monmouth College. Dr. Godde welcomes the chance to add Kiswahili to the languages that he is able to communicate in.
In the Costa Rican rainforest near Vulcan Arenal.
Working in Japan not only led to a number of recent publications for professor Godde, including “Cracking the enigmatic linker histone code,” and “Dynamic alterations of linker histone variants during development,” in the Journal of Biochemistry and International Journal of Developmental Biology, respectively, but it also allowed him to pursue an avocation in Buddhist temples. Professor Godde’s newfound interest in this latter subject not only led him to drag his wife and two teenaged sons to dozens of Japanese temples, he also organized a family “vacation” during their 3-week summer break in which they traveled around China and Southeast Asia. During this trip, Godde explored the contrasts between the Mahayana Buddhist practices in Japan, China, and Singapore with the Theravada practices in the rest of the region through which his family traveled. Of particular interest were the temple ruins of Angkor Wat, Ayutthaya, and Bagan in Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar, respectively. Upon returning to the U.S., professor Godde promptly became a student once again and took his fifth course at Monmouth College: Philosophy and Religions of Asia. He has since given guest lectures on Buddhism at Monmouth as well as led a tour of the Lama Temple in Beijing for a group of high school and college professors during a recent return to China.
Although professor Godde is a self-professed Asiaphile, he feels a special affinity for the African continent as well. When he was 14, professor Godde spent the summer in South Africa during his very first overseas experience. Other stops in Africa included Kenya and Egypt. Professor Godde welcomes his return to the continent which instilled in him his love of travel and looks forward to experiencing the rich biodiversity exhibited at the Tarangire field site and beyond; he even notes that the oldest Buddhist temple in Africa is found in Dar es Salaam…
Professor Godde obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois and then performed postdoctoral research in Molecular Biology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He taught previously at CUNY Brooklyn College and has been a faculty member at Monmouth College for the past nine years, where he serves as Chair of the Biology Department.