Hi, everyone. Welcome. I'm Dr. Nik Stasulli and welcome to the Department of Biology and Environmental Science here at the University of New Haven. Hopefully, you're here because you're interested in some of our degree programs. We have programs in Biology, Genetics, and Biotechnology and a new collaborative program with the Chemistry department in Biochemistry.
I'm the Program Coordinator and Co-Coordinator for a lot of these, so I'm happy to take you through some of the program information here in our department. First, I want to introduce you to our wonderful department faculty. All of these people are around campus and help in the different degree programs. There are five different degree programs within our department. But you're here mostly to look at a couple of them listed here on the left.
So first, we offer a Bachelor of Science in Biology with two different concentrations. One being General Biology, which is great for someone who may not exactly know what area of Biology they want to go into right now, but knows that they're interested in Biology. We also have the Cell Molecular Biology concentration, which is more focused at research and will be really great for going into graduate programs or looking for to get jobs in the pharmaceutical industry or the biotech industry. This is also linked to one of our accelerated programs into our master's degree in Cell and Molecular Biology.
So we have two different tracks, there's a 3+1 and a 4+1 track, meaning that in three years, you can get your Bachelor's and an additional year to get your Masters. Or you can do the 4+1, which means that you have four years for your Bachelor's in one additional year for your Masters. And these are programs that you would hear about and apply to before you come to campus, the fall of your freshman year.
Additionally, we have our Bachelor of Science degree in Genetics and Biotechnology. Again, this is a really great degree for someone who wants to go into the biotech industry into the pharmaceutical industry. You get a lot of hands-on experience in our labs and our classes with all of these programs. But there are some really unique classes geared at experiencing the biotech industry in Connecticut.
You're also probably here if you're interested in Biochemistry, which is our new program, in collaboration with the Chemistry department where you focus on the biological interactions that help create life and the chemical interactions behind that biological life. And as I mentioned before, we also have a Master's program in Cell and Molecular Biology.
We're really, really proud of our student-centered learning environment here in the Department of Biology and Environmental Science, we try to keep our class sizes really small to have a low student-to-faculty ratio. We try to have an active classroom environment as you can see in these photos here, and a real emphasis on excellence in teaching. And that travels over into our hands-on lab classes as well. These live classes are small, usually between 14 to 16 students. Over your time here you can learn over 50 different lab techniques in our classes. And we have some lab space that was newly renovated back in the summer of 2018.
So you'll know that you're getting some really great expertise and some hands-on use of really cutting-edge techniques and equipment. And one thing that we really like about our programs here is that you have a Faculty Academic Advisor starting your first year so you come in declared as a Biology major, or Genetics and Biotechnology major, whatever that may be and you immediately have an advisor in your area of study so that you know that you're going to be on track -- we're able to keep you on track -- so that hopefully there is no surprises and you get out on time. You know that what's most important is you being able to graduate and move on to your next step in life.
Coming in you also have to perform two experiential opportunities while you're here at the University of New Haven. And this can include hands-on research, internships in something that's related to your field. Once everything calms down again, hopefully, our study abroad programs will open back up you can see some great pictures from our past study abroad here and also some service-learning courses. A lot of students choose to do research in our departmental labs. You can see here some pictures from a couple of our lab research areas.
We have several faculty including myself that have labs on campus. I study microbiomes and small molecule discovery and how bacteria talk with each other. We have other faculty who are involved in virology and cardiac disease research, looking at embryonic development and genes that cause autism, neurodegenerative diseases along with DNA repair, Lyme disease, and also breast and cervical cancer research. So there's a wide range of research that's happening here on campus.
A lot of students even stay for the summer in our summer undergraduate research fellowship that they can apply for. And you can see we have some of the students presenting either posters or talks at the end of the summer and throughout the fall. But you also see we have a lot of fun, right, are you playing cornhole one summer, and you had some Lab Olympic Games between the labs.
We're also really focused on career development. Throughout the time in our programs, we encourage you or require you in some cases, to take a freshman course the spring of your freshman year called, "Seminar in Biology Careers." This is really to get you thinking about what you might want to do with a biology degree we bring in people from all different kinds of jobs, including people who have gotten biology degrees and gone on to start a business, gone on to work in biotech or pharmaceuticals, working at different levels of degrees. So if you have your Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D., what does that mean in those settings? People from the medical fields, we bring in a lot of different people.
And we also have the Career Development Center come in and start talking to the students about developing resumes and writing CVs, and encouraging them to start applying for internships even after their freshman or sophomore year if it's appropriate. Then senior year, in the fall of your senior year, we have a class called, "Senior Seminar" that focuses on helping you apply for that next step, whether it's graduate school medical school, you're going on to some other advanced degree or you're going out into the job market, we want to help you write your resume, write your CV, write a cover letter, whatever is necessary to help get you to the next step.
We have a lot of great contacts with local biotech companies in Connecticut, including through this company, this program called, "BioCT," which kind of links all of these programs together, and we get to interact with them. And you can see here, there's actually a networking event where local companies have come to campus and they're interacting with our students as part of that senior seminar and getting people acquainted with networking and how important that is for getting a job later in life.
We also have a center on campus called, "The Health Professions Advising Center." And the purpose is to help students who want to move on into some kind of health profession, whether it's medical, going to medical school, nursing school, PA, PT, veterinary, nursing. There's an advisor here, Professor Obadiah, who will work with students individually making sure that they're on track to apply for those graduate degrees those advanced degrees after their time here at the University of New Haven.
There's also a pre-medical studies designation that will get a letter of recommendation for students who want to go into med school. And they also like to host a lot of workshops and information sessions, bring in guest speakers to just help prepare students for what these advanced degrees may be like. Along with that, you can perform internships for these experiential opportunities here are just some of the places that past students have gone to Arvinas, Alexian-- These are local companies, people have done internships when they were abroad. Next Genomics is in Italy, people have done the research at the University of Heidelberg.
And you can see that they've also done research at other universities. Some people have gone to Yale to do research there. And if you're more into the ecology, mammalian side, right? There's also people that have gone on to the Beardsley Zoo and done internships at the Beardsley Zoo. So there's a lot of great opportunities that our students have had through these internships.
And even after graduation, we're really proud of this percentage of our students working within their field of study, after they leave university of New Haven. Nationally, only about 42.5 % of students are working in their field of study, which is kind of surprising. But you can see here a lot of our students from the data we have up through 2018, a lot of our students have stayed working in the percentage of working in their field of study right as they've come back and reported to us. So we're really proud of that.
We're really proud of our students and we would love if you would come and join us here. So I'm gonna cut this off short. Hopefully, you will come and join me in the question and answer room during our open house. But if you're not able to please if you have any questions email me, my email is right here nstasulli@newhaven.edu and we look forward to seeing you in the future and having you on campus.