Department of Biological Sciences : Welcome to the Department of Biology

Dr. Patricia Komuniecki, Professor and Chair

Welcome to the new Department of Biological Sciences web site. We hope that you can find answers to many of your questions here. If not, please contact one of our faculty or staff by email/phone. In summer 2000, we reorganized our department to emphasize our teaching and research mission toward a focus on organismal biology, cell/molecular biology and biochemistry. We have an outstanding faculty whose nationally and internationally recognized research programs study signal transduction in a variety of different systems ranging from mammalian cells to plants, nematodes and diabetic animals. Research interests span from transcription regulation to autoimmune disease, cancer, apoptosis and tropical disease.

Our facilities are excellent with research labs in the new $33 million Wolfe Hall building, and state-of-the-art instrumentation in the Arts and Sciences Instrumentation Center and the Center for Molecular Biology . The Bowman-Oddy Laboratory building, adjacent to Wolfe Hall, houses our teaching laboratories with Dell computers for every pair of students, as well as undergraduate departmental computer cluster and Help Center.

If you are looking for an undergraduate program that will prepare you for a career in the health care field (medicine/osteopathic medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, optometry and others) or a challenging research career in biotechnology-one of the fastest growing fields in contemporary biology-we are the right place for you! We have about 400 majors (including the pre-professional students). Our placement record is excellent with 85% of our majors with a 3.5 GPA or higher accepted at medical schools. Other students choose to enter the high paying biotechnology job market. If you are looking for a masters or doctoral program with an emphasis on cell/molecular biology, be sure to review our faculty research descriptions that highlight our research strengths. Doctoral students go on to excellent postdoctoral placements while M.S. graduates accept positions at pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies and in medical research labs.

In short, our department is an exciting place to be! We hope that you will give serious consideration to applying to our undergraduate and graduate programs.