In June 1983, researcher Ross Gundersen demonstrated for the first time that a substance released by developing muscle tissue exerts an attraction on growing spinal nerves, illustrating that growing nerves communicate with the muscles to which they eventually attach. That year the university enrolled a record 6,008 students. In September 1985, Chancellor Guskin left UW-Parkside to become president of Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Sheila I. Kaplan, vice chancellor for academic affairs in the Minnesota State University System, became UW–Parkside's third chancellor the following July. In December 1987, the university's biological sciences Professor Chong-maw Chen, a researcher on plant hormones and genetic engineering, was named one of six Wisconsin Distinguished Professors by the Board of Regents, and later reappointed in 1993. The following September, the entire Biological Sciences Department was designated a Center of Excellence by the same board, and approval was granted for the university to offer a master's degree in applied molecular biology, including the study of advanced techniques in cloning, gene splicing and isolating traits on genetic material. In December 1988, professor of engineering science George Perdikaris was also named a Wisconsin Distinguished Professor of Applied Science.