Natural Science Division

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRPERSON

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Natural Science Division! As chairperson, I have the privilege of working with an outstanding faculty and staff. All of us are committed to the total intellectual development of our students, and it is our goal to prepare them for the pursuit of meaningful vocations full of purpose, service, and leadership.

All programs in the Natural Science Division seek to foster scientific inquiry that allows students to gain an understanding of the nature of science and its place in society. Several themes are held in common across all disciplines within our division. These include: 1) Scientific inquiry is based on an objective protocol, the scientific method, which seeks to address observations of the natural world. Successful pursuit of a scientific career requires curiosity, skepticism, tolerance of ambiguity, openness to new ideas, and the willingness to share knowledge. 2) Science has limits in terms of what can be addressed, and it is important for scientists to understand what science can test and what it cannot. Through the years, scientific discovery has taught us that no knowledge is absolute, but with further evidence is subject to revision. 3) Becoming a scientist requires hands-on experience that transcends formal lectures. This experience is gained through laboratory exercises and student driven research projects. 4) Science and faith are not mutually exclusive worldviews. We encourage our students to be able to articulate the distinctive roles that faith and science play in answering important questions about the world and how it works.

If you seek an education in the Natural Science Division at Pepperdine University, you will learn from a faculty who excel in scholarship, teaching, and service. I encourage you to visit the individual websites of our 33 full-time faculty members. As you will see, many have received national and university awards for their teaching, and all are committed to providing our students with research experiences beyond the classroom. Through private (e.g., Mathematical Association of America, Kenneth T. & Eileen L. Norris Foundation, Wood-Claeyssens Foundation, Tooma Family Foundation), university, state (e.g., Santa Monica Bay Restoration Foundation, California Coastal Commission, Santa Clara Water District) and federal (e.g., National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Marine Fisheries Service, California Sea Grant College, National Park Service) funding, our faculty members integrate research experiences for undergraduates with their own scholastic interests.

One of the hallmarks of our effort to provide research experiences for undergraduates is our summer research programs, such as the Summer Undergraduate Research in Biology (SURB) program and Pepperdine’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP). These programs provide training for nearly 40 students each summer. The results of many student projects are presented at state and national meetings and published in leading scientific journals.

We are proud of our classroom and laboratory facilities. In the summer of 2009, the Rockwell Academic Center was fully renovated resulting in three new research laboratories, one new teaching lab and several new classrooms. In the summer of 2008, the Keck Science Center was remodeled creating nine new research laboratories and one teaching laboratory. These new research labs greatly increased our capacity to engage students in undergraduate research in Biology, Chemistry and Sports Medicine. In addition to the new physical plant, students are exposed to a broad array of research equipment (e.g., automated sequencer, flow cytometers, gas chromatograph with mass spectrometer, NMR), which provides training usually not received until graduate school. More importantly, laboratory sections in our courses are kept small to ensure that students receive personal instruction from a professor.

The best indicator of success of any program is the quality of that program’s students and graduates, and in my opinion we continue to be blessed with outstanding students. Our acceptance rate to medical school was 86% in 2009, and between 2007 and 2009, the rate averaged 80%. This is considerably higher than the national average of 50%. In the past three years, Natural Science graduates have a 100% acceptance rate to Dental School, Physical Therapy School and Physician Assistance schools. In addition to these professional schools, some of our students have been accepted to prestigious graduate schools, including UCLA, USC, Penn State, University of Georgia, University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina, and several have received Fulbright Scholarships, Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships, and pre-doctoral scholarships from the National Science Foundation.

It is my hope that you consider our various programs in the Natural Science Division, and I encourage you to peruse our website. Thank you for your interest in our division and its various programs.

Rodney Honeycutt