Lab & Field Skills

Prepared for Labs, Clinics, and Careers

Valpo’s biology program graduates women and men who can be immediately productive in a professional or academic laboratory setting. In addition, many graduates go on to medical careers in which they also utilize the critical-thinking skills learned in the laboratory or the field. Nearly all biology courses have either laboratory or field components, which are taught by professors or other experienced faculty.

First Things First

Let’s Explore

Research

Internships

Learning in the Community

Lab & Field Skills

Student Organizations

Skills at a Glance

Laboratory Skills

In Valpo’s laboratory classes, like Cell Biology and Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy, students learn techniques including:

Light microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy
Dissection
Molecular (gene) cloning
Mammalian cell culture
Restriction analysis, gel electrophoresis, and gel documentation
Centrifugation techniques
Southern and Western blotting
UV/Vis spectrophotometry
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA)

Field Skills

In the department’s many macrobiology classes, students learn the essential skills for field research as well as environmental management:

Identifying plants, insects, and other life forms
Using a dichotomous key
Ecological sampling
Biomonitoring aquatic and terrestrial habitats

To develop these skills, the biology faculty makes frequent field trips to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which ranks third of all U.S. National Parks in species diversity, and to other natural areas in Indiana and Michigan.

Shining Brightly, Together

Voices of Valpo

Bald man in a light blue button-up shirt smiling at the camera with a light background.

Lab & Field Skills

“In our curriculum, we begin to give students more and more control over the scientific endeavor until, by the time they are seniors, they are operating as scientists.”

— Robert Swanson, Ph.D., Professor of Biology