CSC science professor has several accomplishments

About a year ago while teaching at Angelo State in Texas and leading a group of students on a field trip, McAllister found a two-headed Western diamondback rattlesnake. The discovery created quite a stir. It was just the fourth two-headed snake of its species ever found in Texas. The website in which the story about it was placed, had more than 46,000 hits, including those from as far away as Germany and Australia.

McAllister said the snake was probably about a month old when he found it. He kept it alive two more weeks, but when it refused to eat, he euthanized it. Afterward, he joined with Dr. Van Wallach, a Harvard professor who dissected the snake, to write a paper on the snake that has been accepted for publication by a referred journal.

Since 2004, he has co-authored nearly 20 papers that have been published

In addition, McAllister has a special interest in parasitology, and has named about 50 parasites that he has found while peering through a microscope. Two parasites have been named after him. One was a tape worm discovered by a California scientist and named for the new CSC professor “in recognition of Chris McAllister’s contributions to parasitology in amphibians and reptiles.” The other was a protozoan parasite found in a frog in Arkansas.

In 1997-98, he served as president of the Southwestern Association of Parasitologists. He has been the editor of the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science the past three years.

“Reptiles and amphibians have been my research angle,” said McAllister. “I feel comfortable teaching about any of the sciences except botany. I’m not a plant person. But I believe I am pretty well-rounded in the other fields.”

This year at Chadron State, McAllister will teach courses such as Human Anatomy, Human Anatomy and Physiology, Molecular Biology of the Cell and Analysis of Human Movement. He is also team-teaching Rural Health Issues with two professors from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The latter course is online and via interactive television.

McAllister earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, his master’s degree from Arkansas State University at Jonesboro and his Ph.D. from the University of North Texas at Denton. All are in biology.

Prior to teaching at Angelo State last year, he had taught at Texas Wesleyan University, several Texas community colleges and spent five years teaching upper level biology courses at Texas A&M University at Texarkana.

In the past five years, McAllister said he has developed an interest in millipedes and centipedes. He said they have been thoroughly researched east of the Missouri River and on the West Coast, but not nearly as well in the High Plains. He said he has already received permission from the government to search for them in Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota, beginning this spring when they are the most active.

“I’m looking forward to working in this region,” McAllister said. “I’ve already tore up a lot of the flora and fauna in the Southwest.”

McAllister’s wife, Monique, is a court reporter. They have an eight-month-old son, Nic.