Borderless classrooms, endless opportunities

Life Sciences represents the full spectrum of experiential and classroom studies of the natural world.

Lab coats and goggles give way to waders and sunglasses. Many courses in VCU Life Sciences allow our students to immerse themselves in experiential learning. Whether it is navigating the whitewater rapids on the Salmon River, banding birds on top of a mountain in Panama or gathering water quality data down the road at VCU Rice Rivers Center, our pathway to an education in the life sciences takes students to the research.

It's not where you start, it's where you finish. 

Not every one of our graduates began their educational journey with VCU Life Sciences. Our students have joined us from community colleges, four-year universities, even other fields of study within VCU. Our alumni can be found working at places like NASA, NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Health and the Army Corp of Engineers. Whether they are taking wildlife photos for National Geographic or tracking Atlantic Sturgeon in the James River, their paths led them through our hallways. Hands-on student opportunities often lead to top-tier jobs as alumni.

four scenes: a person standing on a pier overlooking a body of water, a v.c.u. student group posing outside in a mountainous area, students working in a lab, and a group of people whitewater rafting

News

A man is sitting at a table under a tent in the forest, holding a bird. He is trying to get a DNA sample. On the table are laboratory supplies.

Nov. 30, 2023

CILSE Ph.D. student Jorge Garzon travels deep into the rainforest for his research

The difficult journey yields access to endemic birds not well studied.

A VCU-led research team is publicly releasing data from a meteorological tower at the Rice Rivers Center, making it the only open dataset for a tidal freshwater wetland on North America’s East Coast. (Photo by Megan May)

Nov. 16, 2023

Data gathered at Rice Rivers Center provides new insight into how ecosystems respond to climate change

Carbon, methane and other data collected by a “flux tower” is being made publicly available to researchers, teachers and policymakers.

Ciara Rhodes, a VCU alum, is a doctoral candidate in the Center Integrative Life Sciences Education in VCU Life Sciences. (Contributed photo)

Nov. 6, 2023

VCU Life Sciences doctoral student Ciara Rhodes receives National Institute of Justice fellowship

An alternative skeletal sampling technique for the recovery of DNA is the focus for the first-generation college student who finds inspiration in the lab and the classroom.