Biology majors may participate in research by enrolling in one or more courses: Biology 401-404, Independent Research, or Biology 495-496, Thesis. These courses are intended to provide students with individual instruction in a sub-discipline of biology and to allow them to develop and pursue their own laboratory or field research projects. Rather than simply serving as laboratory technicians, students taking these courses are expected to develop their own research projects in consultation with a faculty mentor, to carry the projects to completion and, in most cases, to submit a written research report at the end of each semester. Research students should expect to spend at least ten hours each week working in the lab, reading published research papers, caring for living material, etc. Although students enrolled in Independent Research or in Thesis are treated in the same way by the Department and by their faculty mentors, the courses are different and they serve different purposes.
Independent Research
These courses (Biol. 401-404) are intended to allow any biology major to pursue an advanced laboratory research project under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Independent Research may be taken for up to four semesters by junior or senior students. These courses share the intellectual characteristics of the Thesis courses, but do not require any particular grade point average, production or oral defense of a thesis or approval by the Faculty Committee on Honors and Academic Awards. In all other respects, faculty expectations of the Independent Research student are identical with those for honors candidates. In their sophomore or junior year, students interested in taking an Independent Research course should discuss their research interests with the faculty member whose research program most interests them. The advisor and student identify the problem to be investigated, develop a plan of research and carry it to completion.Many students who participate in the honors program begin their research projects in their junior year by taking a semester of Independent Research to define their research projects, learn the necessary techniques and to obtain preliminary data. During the 2004-05 academic year, 30 biology majors conducted research projects in colaboration with biology faculty.
Honors Thesis Research
As is the case with Independent Research, the Thesis courses (Biol. 495-496) are intended to allow any biology major to pursue an advanced laboratory research project under the supervision of a faculty mentor. The research is done in the area of expertise of the mentor and frequently results in the publication of a paper in a refereed journal with the student as co-author. Thesis courses are normally taken only by seniors and they are expected to lead to the presentation of an honors thesis by the student at the end of the senior year; all honors work in biology is laboratory research of an original nature. The honors program in the Department of Biology functions under the general rules for graduation with honors supervised by the Faculty Committee on Academic Progress. Students must be accepted by a faculty mentor and their thesis research proposal must be approved by the Department.
Following a year or more of work, each honors candidate must defend her or his thesis before members of the Department and at least one examiner from outside the Department and other invited persons in a public forum. The student must be approved for graduation with honors by the Department, the Faculty Committee on Academic Progress, the entire Faculty and, ultimately, the Board of Trustees. During the 2004-05 academic year, two biology majors produced and defended honors theses under the guidance of biology faculty.
Learn much more about student research at Lafayette by reading our Handbook for Research Students.
Student Fellowships & Awards Available
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