About the Division

The Earlham College Division of Natural Sciences is a cohesive group comprised of the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geosciences, Mathematics, and Physics/Astronomy. The Division is proud of its students, who routinely go on to obtain a Ph.D., an M.D., or other terminal degree after graduation from Earlham. According to the Weighted Baccalaureate Origins Study for 1991-2000 by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium, the College, as a whole, ranks 26th out of 1,300 U.S. colleges and universities in the percentage of graduates who go on to receive Ph.D.s. The Division of Natural Sciences is well-represented in these rankings, with Earlham Biology placing 8th (in the 99th percentile) in the number of students who go on to receive Ph.D.s; Earlham Life Sciences is also ranked 8th and Earlham Geosciences ranked 20th.

We believe that one reason for our student's successful pursuit of higher degrees is the emphasis on student-faculty research in the Natural Science curriculum. According to a NCCA Comprehensive Evaluation of Earlham College in 2004, "The [Earlham] science faculty have embraced a model of excellent science education involving student-faculty research." Several of our Majors (Biochemistry, Chemistry, Geosciences, Psychobiology) require original research in order to graduate, and all Departments engage students in hands-on research within specific courses in their curricula.  Students use primary scientific literature as part of their research and course work, thus participating in the wider scientific research community.

In order to support these endeavors, our faculty have acquired numerous grants. Most recently, in Februrary of 2007, a group of faculty from the departments of Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geosciences, and Mathematics were awarded a $360,000 grant from the W.M Keck Foundation for multidisciplinary undergraduate research. In 2006, Dr. Peter Blair, Assistant Professor of Biology, was awarded $164,400 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue student-faculty research in malaria genomics. In 2003, the Departments of Biology and Chemistry were awarded $60,000 from the Merck Company Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for interdisciplinary research. And in 2002, Professors Mark Stocksdale, Michael Deibel, and Nathan Trueblood successfully wrote a grant to the National Science Foundation for $439,419 to purchase a 400 MHz NMR spectrometer.

Our students and faculty travel to national meetings to share their research efforts on a regular basis. At the 2005 national Sigma Xi annual student research conference in Seattle, WA, student Zachary Ferraro presented a poster entitled "Growth and Characterization of Co-Implanted Epitaxial Thin Films of Copper on Silicon," for which he received a blue ribbon award. Recently, Earlham was the only liberal arts college at the 2005 SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Conference, where Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck and students Josh Hursey and Josh McCoy won best poster award for "Benchmarking and Tuning the GROMACS Molecular Dynamics Package on Beowulf Clusters." Also in 2005, three students and two faculty of the Chemistry Department traveled to San Diego, California for the 229th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Professors Mark Stocksdale and Lori Watson along with student Rachel Stacy presented "Polymer-Bound Ph3P in Mitsunobu Reactions Involving Cyclic beta-Hydroxy Tertiary Amines," while Mark Stocksdale with students Adair Lindsay and Doug Hardesty presented "Synthetic Efforts Toward Novel Phytosiderophore Conjugates."

Although we are proud of our student-faculty research, our faculty remain committed to teaching. John Iverson, Professor of Biology, was entitled the "2005 Indiana Professor of the Year" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. All faculty members teach classes, and none of our courses are taught by teaching assistants. However, many opportunities exist for students to gain experience in teaching through leading tutoring sessions and acting as laboratory teaching assistants. Our class sizes are small and allow for great student-faculty interaction. Although several introductory courses may have lectures with over 50 students, most class sizes fall between 10 and 25 students. This creates a cohesive and small group of students and faculty – all students within a major know one another, and all faculty know both students and other faculty throughout the division.

For more information about any one department, please use the links to the left. If you have further questions, feel free to contact Division Convener and Assistant Professor of Geosciences Ron Parker .