1. BCMB is in an Arts and Sciences College in close collaboration with Professional Colleges: Students gain a strong science education in the science departments, a liberal arts education in the general education program at a nationally recognized university (Drake is listed regularly in top midwestern univerisities by USNews) Professional courses and programs in education, business, law, pharmacy and journalism can be added to a student's curriculum to pursue a range of science related career paths. Further, the size of Drake enables students to get the courses needed in a timely fashion so they can usually finish these programs in the normal 4 years.
2. Close student-faculty relationships: We are committed to maintaining close contact between and among students and faculty. This allows faculty and peers to not only help students with academic issues but provide mentoring for research experiences, professional networking, and planning for postgraduate education and career choices. Our classes are taught by professors and our class sizes are small (the biochemistry class, for example is typically about 25-30 students). We know each other well in formal as well as informal settings.
3. Custom Fit Curriculum Development: The BS degree has flexibility to accomodate post-graduation goals; the BA degree includes a career focus area to provide space to pursue a cross-disciplinary focus. Several options are developed and still others are possible upon approval of the BCMB board of directors. This allows you to develop a curriculum to match your career goals.
4. Rich Research Opportunities: An important feature of the BCMB program is the emphasis on research. Students begin research early in their undergraduate career, often during the second semester of their freshman year. Faculty and collaborating scientists provide a wide range of potential research projects in which students may engage. Through collaborations with regional faculty and industry, many internship sites are available both during the school year and over the summers, and these often provide stipends for experienced students. Research posibilities include projects on biomedical aspects of trauma, cell cytoskeletal proteins, prairie plant biodiversity, gene therapy, genetic engineering of crop plants, and agricultural nutrition. During the junior and senior years, students participate in the Advanced Molecular Life Sciences course where they are directly involved in collaborative biomedical research. Students write and orally present their research projects during their senior year as part of the capstone experience. Students often present their research at professional scientific meetings and in scientific journals.
We regularly obtain funding from the ISGC space grant program.
4. Learning-based Program: The program emphasizes student learning over accumulation of lists of courses and credits. Accordingly, when students complete the program, they will have a highly marketable degree. They will have extensive hands-on experiences with modern laboratory techniques and with computer use, they will have extensive training in communication skills through general education courses as well as within their BCMB courses, and they will be able to demonstrate that they have learned, retained and applied content knowledge from biochemistry, cell and molecular biology through testing and portfolio. (See our assessment plan)
6. Record of Student Success
7. Personable Faculty: Students and faculty work together as collaborators and get to know each other well.
8. Excellent Facilities: BCMB uses facilities of the Biology and Chemistry departments at Drake as well as those contributed by our research collaborators, currently Iowa Methodist Medical Center. We have a record of recieving NSF funding to purchase laboratory equipment in addition to the regular purchases through Drake funds. Examples of equipment regularly used by BCMB students include refrigerated centrifuges, electrophoresis equipment, nmr, ir, capillary electrophoresis, microtiter plate reader, hplc, gc, particle gun, sterile hood, cell culture incubators, and a new greenhouse.
