Biological Studies

Program Info: The Earlham Biology Department’s distinctive strength is its balanced curriculum with unusual depth in fieldwork in ecology on the one hand, and modern laboratory study in cellular and molecular biology on the other. Students learn the principles of the variety of sub-disciplines in biology, and they acquire skills in scientific problem solving by means of laboratory, field and literature research. The rich curriculum allows students to develop a strong general program and to concentrate in the areas of cellular/ molecular/ physiological or organismal/ ecological/ evolutionary biology.

A hallmark of biology at Earlham is the close working relationships students develop with professors in the classroom, in the laboratory and in the field. Recent cooperative student-faculty research efforts have investigated a wide variety of topics including immune responses in insects, population dynamics of turtles and endangered iguanas,malaria genomics, presettlement vegetation and on old growth forest ecology, spider ecology in Dominica, landscape history and the dynamics of bird populations since the time of settlement, and the ecology of invasive weeds in deciduous forests.