About Us
The Department of Biology at Belmont University offers a variety of programs and courses. In addition to preparing students for careers in fields of biology, it is the goal of the department to introduce students to the excitement of scientific research, the aesthetic pleasure of studies in the living world, and the importance of biological principles as they affect the human condition.
The success of any academic department is found in the interactions of the persons, the ideas, the facilities, and the equipment - all of which, taken together, constitute a learning community.
The Department of Biology at Belmont consists of seven faculty members, each specializing in a different area of the biological sciences; the staff, consisting of a secretary and laboratory manager; and the students - around 90 biology majors - with interests varying from medical missions to secondary education to laboratory research. Each of these people is responsible for making the biology department come alive as a place for intellectual stimulation, for study of important societal issues, and for the fulfillment of a better understanding of one's place in the universe.
Faculty and students at Belmont may be found pipetting solutions, counting bacterial colonies, measuring cicada wings, crossing fruit flies, mapping ponds, and measuring blood pressures. These same students also study together, visit conferences together, and prepare presentations together. They actively pursue learning, they collaborate, they document, and they present. In summary, they are doing biology*.
* This phrase is the title of a fascinating book, Doing Biology by Joel Hagen, Douglas Allchin and Fred Singer (1996, HarperCollins College Publishers), which captures how we view the best way to learn biology - by doing it.
