Biology

On Thursday, March 31, students, faculty, staff and community members gathered for the Anna Howard Shaw keynote, delivered by MK Czerwiec.

The agreement provides flexible opportunities for students entering the nursing field.

While focusing on freshwater macroinvertebrates, Jess Garcia-Lopez, ’22, is also adding knowledge around wild rice growing in the Whitehouse Nature Center.

Biology

“I feel like at a bigger school, I’d be very intimidated to talk to my professor in that way, where we can be vulnerable with each other. Having that small faculty-to-student ratio makes it very comfortable to have conversations like that.”

When your research and teaching focuses on microbes, you can work anywhere—and Dr. Ola Olapade, professor of biology, has covered a lot of ground. His own research has taken him to the confluence of the Indian and Atlantic oceans in South Africa, Mayan ruins in Mexico and Belize (where he studied the impacts and contributions of microbes to the degradation and deterioration of stone monuments), Morocco, the Great Lakes and more.

Dr. Richard Youle, ’74, came to Albion College with the hope of teaching one day. But when the research bug bit him, he embarked on a career as an NIH researcher that has spanned more than four decades. This year, his research into Parkinson’s Disease has earned him the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Gregory Eastwood knew since he was young that he wanted to be a doctor. Now, a career that has included work as a gastroenterologist and a bioethicist has led him to write a book about the issues involved with the end of life. “I think it is important to be aware of the process of dying and how it plays out in contemporary America,” he says.

To paraphrase an old saying, Annika Markovich’s summer is water to drink—but that’s about it. “We get only one freshwater shower a week and there are no laundry machines, so everything is washed with salt water from the ocean,” the senior biology major says. “It was a large adjustment, but I got used to it. It is just a very different lifestyle than the one we live in the States.”

Kylie Heitman, ’17, has been a horse lover and rider since she was five and she has long dealt with the stress many horses experience when their daily routine is interrupted. Specifically, she wanted to know if an essential oil, in this case lavender, when diffused into the air could reduce stress in horses by suppressing their heart rates and cortisol levels.