Happy 2025! We have had a busy and productive year in 2024. Our faculty, students, and staff are excited about the coming years ahead. In 2024, we had 137 graduates with a BS or BA degree and eight graduates with a master’s degree!
The entire faculty and staff attended a full-day retreat at the beautiful Proximity Hotel in Greensboro. The focus was to establish our vision of the department in the next 10 years. The retreat was a remarkable success and everyone enjoyed the day, were fed well, and worked hard, ending the day exhausted and happy. Our Visions statement is forward thinking and can be read here:
Department of Biology Vision and Strategic Plan
We are immensely proud and are moving forward rapidly, already hired a director of our undergraduate advising program, Dr. Annie Sohler who has at the end of 2024 charted a pathway forward toward a cutting edge central advising model for our undergraduate majors. Dr. Sally Koerner, who leads our undergraduate studies committee has already streamlined our curriculum requirements and removed barriers to timely graduation. Dr. Kim Komatsu our new Associate Department Head is a trusted advisor to me and a passionate advocate for graduate and undergraduate student success.
We also completed a major curriculum revision funded by participation in an NSF program integrating best practices of research experiences directly into all levels of our courses and are now recognized as national leaders in curriculum design, featured in a new book, titled Transforming Academic Culture and Curriculum: Integrating and Scaffolding Research Throughout Undergraduate Education, by M. Malachowski, E Ambos, K Karukstis, J. Kinzie, and J. Osborn. Our new curriculum is highly inclusive of all student and captures the essence of a liberal arts education. Our faculty research programs are growing and internationally recognized attracting record levels of external funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, USDA, and foundations.
I am enjoying my service as department head more than ever. It is such a pleasure to enable faculty, staff, and students to do what they love. I have enjoyed my own research programs focused on wetlands biology, collaborations with the Highland Biological Station, where my students do research with Dr. Rada Petric, UNC Director of the Institute for the Environment stationed at HBS, also a UNCG Ph.D. graduate. I have three grantfunded programs focused on enabling students and faculty from minoritized communities and work with four other UNC Institutions on one of those projects. They give me extraordinary joy to level the playing field for all students and offer faculty program activities that enable success and job satisfaction.
Faculty, staff, and students in Biology have been so productive and successful in 2024! It is such a pleasure to offer you a glimpse of 2024 in the UNCG Department. I hope you will enjoy reading about their stories here on our website.
Maclolm Schug, Ph.D.
Department Head, Biology
