VC Biochemistry Department Facilities:
Biology Department
Chemistry Department
Olmsted Hall was completed in 1973 and was named in honor of Louise MacCracken Olmsted (class of 1932),Nancy Olmsted, M.D. (class of 1960), and Robert G. Olmsted, a former Trustee of the College.
At the time of its construction, Olmsted brought together, for the first time under one roof and one department, the original departments of Physiology, Zoology, and Plant Sciences.
Twenty-nine members of the faculty, staff, and administration, all of whom are responsible for the day-to-day operations of our teaching and research operations, work in Olmsted Hall. Most of Olmsted's space is dedicated to laboratories, an arrangement that demonstrates our commitment to research experiences for undergraduates in both our teaching and faculty-research laboratories. At a time when many colleges and universities are reducing hands-on laboratory teaching, all of the introductory and intermediate courses for majors taught by Vassar's Biology Department have, in addition to lectures, weekly, four-hour laboratories.
Students enrolled in introductory and intermediate courses in the Biology Department apply theory inpractice in our teaching laboratories. For example, students in Plant Structure and Diversity (Biology 208) study the structure of orchids in order to understand how flowering plants and their insect pollinators have co-evolved (pictured to the right).
In other laboratories, students determine the oxygen-binding properties of hemoglobin (Animal Physiology, Biology 228), examine the reproductive allocation patterns of female gerbils (Animal Behavior, Biology 340), or use DNA splicing techniques to investigate antibiotic resistance in bacteria (The Cellular Basis of Life, Biology 152).
For some questions, the appropriate laboratory is outside in the field. To understand how insect parasites influence plant growth, students in Ecology (Biology 240) search for, collect, and analyze galls at Vassar's Ecological Preserve (see below). To investigate the ecological causes of morphological variation within species of plantain, students in The Evolution of Biological Diversity (Biology 151) work at the Preserve or in Olmsted's Greenhouse.
The teaching that we do in laboratories and the research that students share in are abundantly supported by the latest in biological instrumentation. Included in the pool of instruments and techniques available to students are excellent light and electron microscopes (shown here), digital imaging hardware and software, PCR and other molecular biological techniques, research-grade spectrophotometers, biochemical auto-samplers, and so on. Many of these instruments and techniques are used by students in our introductory courses.
The 500-acre Ecological Preserve is located about a kilometer to the south of the campus, near enough to make it easy to incorporate field studies into courses at all levels of the biology curriculum. At the center of the preserve is a new field station equipped with library, laboratory, microscopes, computers, and other instrumentation.
The preserve itself contains a very diverse assemblage of habitats, from streams to ponds and from recently-mown fields to old-growth forest.
All of the biology faculty are actively engaged in research as well as teaching. Much of the time these two activities are seamlessly blended, with student/faculty teams engaged in research together. Faculty members work directly with students in courses and in independent research. Here Jay Goodman (VC '97) and John Long, Associate Professor, work together to build electrodes for experiments on muscle physiology. Often these investigations take place in research laboratories. It is quite common for these investigations to culminate in presentations at professional meetings and in publications co-authored with students. Much of the research that happens in these laboratories and in the field is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and a number of projects also receive funding from Vassar's Committee on Research.
Back to topThe Chemistry department, located in the Seeley G. Mudd Chemistry Building is a state of the art building that uses strikingly open architecture to foster collaborative work and invite interaction between scholars.
Design features such as wall-less laboratories, lounges used by both students and faculty, and faculty offices clustered in a central area, promote an atmosphere of shared learning. This manifests itself in close faculty-student research collaborations, as well as friendships.
The department houses many teaching and research instruments as well as state-of -the-art computer facilities. Macintosh computers, PC computers, and Silicon Graphics workstations, located throughout the building, are connected to the campus network via ethernet.
Listed below are the major instruments housed in Mudd Chemistry which are used by students and faculty in teaching, labs, and research.