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24 SUMMER 2012 | ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE
L'INATTENDU PATHOLOGISTE
DE LA FAUNE (THE UNEXPECTED
WILDLIFE PATHOLOGIST)
From studying psychology
and French to identifying the
West Nile Virus in the West-
ern Hemisphere, the story
of
Tracey McNamara ’76
is not typical of a world-
renowned scientist, re-
searcher and full-time educator.
McNamara always wanted to be a veterinar-
ian, but her high school teachers discour-
aged her from pursuing a science-related
career. While she was good in labs, math
wasn’t her forte.
Fast-forward 25 years when she uncovered
the first known case of West Nile Virus in the
Western Hemisphere while working at the
New York Wildlife Conservation Society’s
Bronx Zoo as head of the department of
pathology, and it’s easy to say she’s proven
her naysayers wrong.
A semester in France while at St. Lawrence
made McNamara rethink her direction, and
her semester in Kenya “solidified my mission
to work as a wildlife veterinarian,” she says.
McNamara’s professors encouraged her to
stay at St. Lawrence a year after graduating
to complete courses that would qualify her
for veterinary school.
In addition to her tenure in pathology at the
Bronx Zoo, McNamara has been a clinical
veterinarian, a researcher for the Midwest
Research Institute, a resource for numer-
ous international government agencies
and a biodefense consultant. She’s been
interviewed on “Animal Planet” and was the
scientific technical advisor for the movie
Contagion
.
She’s has also taught for more than two
decades. A professor in the College of Vet-
erinary Medicine at the Western University
of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., McNa-
mara embraces the chance to educate the
future of her field.
“I love working closely with students and
enjoy our problem-based learning curriculum
because it gives me a lot of time to interact
with them,” she says. “It’s just as fun and
rewarding as anything I’ve ever done.”
AUTHORITY IN CHILD,
ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
Jim Garbarino ’68
finds his pro-
fessional core in making sense of
senseless violence. His research
focuses on child and adolescent
trauma and its impact on social,
emotional, moral and spiritual
development. “Over the years,
I’ve had one foot in academia and the other
foot ‘in the field’ – war zones, schools and
refugee camps,” he says.
His interest in the political and social con-
texts of child and adolescent development
goes back to St. Lawrence. “My presentation
at a recent conference in Rome, Italy, drew
heavily on my honors thesis, which dealt
with religion and democracy,” Garbarino
says. “Being the first in my family to attend
college, my St. Lawrence education was
transformative in many ways.”
After receiving his master’s degree and Ph.D.
from Cornell, he’s taught at Penn State, Cor-
nell and now at Loyola University Chicago as
the humanistic psychology chair. He spent a
decade as president of the Erikson Institute
for Advanced Study in Child Development
while still teaching.
“I enjoy being a mentor and try to do for my
students what my mentors did for me,” he
says. “They were the people upon whom I
modeled my life as a scholar.”
The author of 23 books, including
Lost Boys:
Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We
Can Save Them
, Garbarino has lectured
on six continents and been a resource for
students, practitioners and journalists as well
as judges and juries in murder trials. “I find
all aspects of my work exciting,” he says,
“but I think of myself first and foremost as a
teacher.”