Letter from the Chair 2024

It is spring on the Central coast right now — the hills around San Luis Obispo are vibrant green, and things feel fresh and new. The Biological Sciences Department had a great year again in 2023, and we’re looking forward to the future!

            Several of our department’s faculty received awards last year.  In 2023 Dr. Clint Francis earned Cal Poly’s Distinguished Scholarship award, in recognition of his remarkable and productive research on anthropogenic effects on wildlife. You can read more about Clint’s research here. Also in 2023, Dr. Alejandra Yep (along with Dr. Jasmine Nation from the Liberal Studies department) received the Cal Poly Learn by Doing award for their Nuestra Ciencia project (which involves Cal Poly students in Spanish-language science education at local elementary schools). You can read more about their efforts in a recent article published in English and Spanish in Bailey College’s Undergraduate Research magazine, and in a recent article in The Mustang News. 

 I’ll also introduce our newest faculty member. Dr. Magdalena Maj will be joining our tenure-line faculty in Fall 2024. Magdalena was hired as a neuroscientist; will be teaching anatomy and physiology classes for us, as well as biotechnology classes. We are happy to have her on board, and are looking forward to working with her starting this fall!

We have also hired a new full-time staff member — Theresa Bersin has joined our Instructional Support team, with a particular focus on our marine classes. Theresa has extensive experience in marine biology, and will be a great addition to our team!

With these additions, our department now has nine full-time staff members who support the teaching mission of the department. We currently have 36 full-time instructional faculty, plus around 20 part-time instructors and around 45 graduate students (15 or so who teach for us in any given year).

These instructors and staff serve a total of around 900 students with majors in our department (708 biological sciences majors, 78 microbiology majors, and 108 marine science students). There are also around 200 students working on a minor offered by our department, and many, many students from other majors who take one or more classes from us to satisfy their general education or major requirements. All told, in 2023-2024 enrollment in classes offered by our department totaled more than 10,000, which is remarkable (and makes us one of the largest departments on campus, when measured by the number of seats in classes offered).

We are always grateful to our alumni and supporters who donate to the department; those funds really help us enhance our program in ways that directly impact students. Among other things, in the past year donor funds allowed us to purchase a vapor pressure osmometer for physiological evaluations of living animals and autonomous acoustic recorders to monitor changes in animal behavior, breeding activities or other valuable research information. Donor funds also helped support an update of the anatomical models used in our anatomy and physiology teaching laboratories; our students with interests in the health professions will directly benefit from this.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the newsletter!

Sincerely,

Ken Hillers, Chair