Welcome to the Elon University undergraduate program in Biology.   The faculty and staff of the Biology Department are excited about the possibilities and opportunities your decision to major in biology brings to us.   We look forward to getting to know you as we engage in classroom discussions, laboratory investigations, field trips, internship experiences, international study courses, and collaborative research projects. As you get to know us better during your first year, we hope that you will come to think of us as your friends as well as your teachers. Each of the faculty members in the department has something special to offer you, from nature photography to forensic science.   We are genuinely concerned for you as a student and as an individual and we will challenge you to excel both academically and personally.     

The McMichael Science Center and the adjacent greenhouse offer spacious classrooms and labs, student research areas, and modern instrumentation.    These buildings are equipped with facilities and equipment similar to those found at much larger research universities.    Some notable examples include a human cadaver laboratory, a GIS laboratory, a scanning electron microscope, high performance liquid chromatographs, gas chromatographs, a programmable research-grade growth chamber, a refrigerated ultracentrifuge, a research-grade epifluorescence microscope, and PCR thermocyclers.   But, unlike research universities, the intended users of these amenities at Elon are undergraduate students, not Ph.D. candidates.   

There are many great opportunities for you here, and we will work with you to create a program that is best suited to your personal and professional goals.   We encourage you to get involved early in student organizations such as the Biology Club, Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society, Lincoln Premedical Society, and the Sierra Club Student Coalition.   We also recommend that you seek out experiential learning opportunities by working as an undergraduate laboratory assistant for the department, developing an undergraduate research project with a faculty advisor, completing an internship experience at a corporate or non-profit organization, or traveling abroad to study tropical ecosystems in Peru or Belize.   Take advantage of the many great opportunities the Biology Department has to offer.   A terrific source of information about the department, its faculty, and its programs is available on our web page (www.elon.edu/biology/).    Once again, welcome to the Biology Department.