About Biology - Biology

Message from the Chairperson

On behalf of the faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Biology, I’d like to welcome you to our website.

There is a great deal of helpful information on this site about our courses, tracks, and programs; the faculty members who teach them; and opportunities for careers across the spectrum of biology.

The Biology Department has a proud tradition of excellence in undergraduate education. At the heart of this tradition is a group of dedicated faculty members who share a strong interest in and commitment to student learning. At the undergraduate level, we offer a wide range of courses and programs, including degrees in Biology Education; Environmental Health Sciences and Biochemistry; and curriculum tracks in Cell and Molecular, Pre-Medical, Pre-Veterinary, and Honors Biology; and we will soon offer an Environmental Biology track as well. Thanks to our success at obtaining external funding, our laboratory facilities are outstanding for an institution of our size and mission.

The other pages of this website will describe our programs and introduce you to the people of the IUP Biology Department. But to help prospective students, their parents, and other readers to understand us at a more fundamental level, I want to use this page to outline briefly for you our basic philosophy and our most important characteristics.

First, the Biology Department is a learning community that is centered on students. This means that student learning is the main reason for the department’s existence and the major focus of its activities.
Next, we believe that learning science is best achieved by doing science. To provide opportunities for learning by doing in a variety of settings, we offer a number of educational experiences that involve hands-on science, including internships, independent studies, honors thesis research, and others.
Third, we have high expectations for our students and ourselves. Our current students often complain that our courses and our programs are difficult, but our graduates report that they have been well prepared for professional school, graduate school, or the workplace.
Fourth, we understand that biology is a very diverse science with many interdisciplinary connections. We want our department to reflect and our students to understand the breadth of biology and its relevance to other disciplines.
Finally, we recognize that we are a part of a larger community of learning that includes, for example, our K-12 partners and nontraditional learners throughout the Commonwealth.

Although the department has grown significantly over my years here, these characteristics have endured without change. These are the principles that define us and guide what we do. In my opinion, they represent the ingredients for a great undergraduate education.

Thanks again for your interest in IUP’s Department of Biology.

Dr. Carl Luciano

carl.luciano@iup.edu

Core Values

Our core values are:

A basic knowledge of the biological sciences is essential for all citizens.
Such knowledge is best communicated by a diverse faculty and curriculum.
Biology faculty members are responsive to the needs of a number of external constituencies that include students, colleagues, the university, and the community.

We feel these values are best upheld by:

A commitment to the premise that the Teacher-Scholar model—as described locally to include excellence in teaching as well as the Scholarship of Discovery, the Scholarship of Integration, the Scholarship of Application, and the Scholarship of Pedagogy—defines the primary role and major activities of the IUP faculty.
A broad definition of departmental citizenship, to include service, duties, rights, and privileges of students, faculty, and staff, as the foundation of a learning community.

Purpose

The purpose of the Department of Biology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania is to integrate modern pedagogy with active scholarship in order to provide students with the breadth of knowledge that is essential for an informed, educated person and with excellent preparation for a successful career in their chosen field of endeavor.

Mission

The mission of the Biology Department is to prepare all of our students to achieve success in some area of the biological sciences and/or to make scientifically informed decisions as citizens in the twenty-first century. We do this by providing them with a challenging, diverse curriculum that emphasizes active, hands-on, experiential learning involving field experiences and contemporary technology as appropriate. We believe that this broad approach is essential to a strong education in biology and that important learning experiences take place outside formal class activities. We understand and strive to communicate to our students the diversity of the science of biology, and we emphasize the relevance of interactions with colleagues in other departments and universities, involving cooperative scholarly and teaching activities as well as interactions with other disciplines. Scholarly and community outreach to external constituencies, such as the K-12 community and the general public, are important components of our mission.