It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Department of Biological Sciences at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The Department excels in fostering cross-cutting, interdisciplinary research initiatives by removing administrative and phylogenetic constraints, and by encouraging interaction among our diverse faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students. It is our view that this approach is a critical one for science in the 21st century and yields significant rewards in the pace and quality of discovery. Such a strategy can bring powerful problem solving capabilities to bear on basic research questions that unidimensional approaches have been traditionally unsuccessful at solving. This also promotes innovative educational opportunities for our undergraduate majors and reduces fragmentation of the biological curriculum. Our department offers undergraduate degrees in Biological Sciences, Biochemistry and Microbiology. A new area of concentration has been established in marine biology. Further information about our undergraduate curricula can be found here.

Biological Sciences is now the largest academic unit on campus based on the number of tenure-track faculty (63), with 1300 undergraduate majors. To maintain our traditional strengths and foci, we have established three Divisions within our Department: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Cellular, Developmental, & Integrative Biology; and Systematics, Ecology, & Evolution. Overviews of the diverse research interests of our faculty can be found here.

There are approximately 130 graduate students in the department. Funding for these students comes from a combination of departmental teaching assistantships, fellowships, and external research support. Further information on our graduate program can be obtained here. The Department maintains close linkages with the Museum of Natural Science and the LSU Herbarium and is a member of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), which provides excellent facilities and opportunities for marine and estuarine research. Numerous collaborations are maintained with other units on campus, and a diverse array of field sites are utilized by our faculty. For a more complete description of our facilities and resources please click here.

Thank you for visiting our web site. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions or comments.

Dr. Marcia Newcomer, Chair