About the Biology Department

Biology is actually a number of different
approaches to the study of life, from the
molecular and biochemical to the ecological.

The Biology Department at Hope College offers all Hope College students an opportunity to participate in biology, either in depth as biology majors, or at some appropriate non-majors level.

Several members of the Biology Department faculty have been recognized as outstanding educators at the state and national levels.

Biology majors leave Hope College well prepared to pursue a number of different careers. Many of our majors go on to earn advanced degrees in graduate, medical, or dental schools. Our success of placing students in those schools is outstanding. Other students go on to careers in the allied-health professions, industrial research and laboratory positions, conservation biology, and secondary education.

We give students the chance to learn biology in well-taught courses in a diverse curriculum. Courses emphasize the active participation of the students in lecture, discussion and laboratory settings. A hallmark of the department's approach is belief that students best learn biology by doing biology. Thus almost all of our courses include investigative laboratories. In addition, we provide students with the opportunity to be biologists by participating in research projects with our faculty. Student/faculty research occurs both in the summer when stipends are available to give selected students the experience of full-time research, and during the academic year. More than 100 research papers co-authored by students have been presented or published in the last five years. The variety of research projects reflects the diversity of interests of the biology faculty:

• ecologists are studying seed banks and tropical forest regeneration, coevolution of plants and fruit-eating birds, and behavioral ecology of tropical birds.

• botanists are investigating chemical defense mechanisms, and classical and molecular plant systematics.

• physiologists are studying water relationships in organisms by looking at temperature regulation and thirst in rats, the role of vasopressin receptors, mammary gland biology, and electrophysiology of the hippocampus.

• geneticists and molecular biologists are studying environmental mutagenesis and carcinogenesis due to pesticides and other agricultural chemicals, receptor cloning, molecular biology of amino acid carriers, lipid metabolism in yeast, and the action of calcitonin.

• zoologists are investigating the host-parasite relationships of trematodes, the competition for nesting sites between bird species.

The department has well-equipped laboratories and a 55-acre nature preserve for both teaching and research (Hope College Nature Preserve), and a well-supplied library of books and current journals. Recently acquired additions to our capabilities include a computer lab for statistical analyses and simulation studies, diode array spectrophotometers, an automated DNA sequencer, gamma and scintillation counters, a video image analysis system, a computerized oxygen and carbon dioxide analysis system for metabolism studies, a portable photosynthesis system, equipment for electrophysiological studies, six computerized polygraphs for physiological measurements, new field equipment, a molecular biology laboratory, and facilities for plant and animal tissue culture and gene cloning and amplification.

Qualified students can spend a semester at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, at a university abroad, or in an internship while pursuing their other studies at Hope College or during participation in one of the college's domestic off-campus programs.