ObjectivesPERHAPS NOTHING IS AS BASIC TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE as the examination of life itself. The study of biology gives us a deeper understanding of ourselves and our world – the structure and function of plants and animals, the evolution and diversity of living organisms and the cellular processes of life. Biological concepts and processes also are central to many of the most crucial issues of our time, from AIDS to genetics, environmental damage and the threat of bioterrorism.
Course descriptionAcademic Program
RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES Biology students at Hamilton have ongoing opportunities to collaborate and perform research with faculty members both on and off campus. The energy and engagement created by these collaborative efforts gives the biology program its distinctive identity and sense of community. Each year, dozens of students work in the lab alongside their professors on special projects. Others pursue paid summer internships at Hamilton and such prestigious institutions as Yale University's School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, the National Institutes of Health and the National Zoological Park.
The biology program extends far beyond the conventional lab. Biology majors have opportunities to do fieldwork in such varied settings as the Adirondack High Peaks, Costa Rica and Antarctica. Student researchers share their findings with others in the scientific community. In recent years, Hamilton students presented research papers at national meetings of the American Malacological Union, the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology, the National Council of Undergraduate Research, the New York Natural History Conference and SUNY-Binghamton's Annual Biological Sciences Research Symposium.
THE SENIOR PROGRAM
At the core of the Senior Program in biology is the senior project, an intensive two-semester field or laboratory research project carried out in association with a faculty member. The project concludes with a written project and an oral presentation given in the second semester of the senior year. The senior project is an opportunity to synthesize and focus previous coursework. It culminates in an original work of scholarship that provides an in-depth examination of a particular empirical or theoretical issue.
RESOURCES
Hamilton's Biology Department and laboratories are housed in the Science Center. This state-of-the-art facility gives undergraduates access to many of the same instruments that are available only to graduate students at many schools, including both transmission and scanning electron microscopes, imaging workstations, a radioisotope laboratory, scintillation and gamma counters, two environmental chambers, an indoor stream, a greenhouse, and a bioinformatics computing facility. Hamilton is also well situated to take advantage of a variety of habitats for field studies.