Elizabethtown College Biology Department

Congratulations to Alumna Trisha Clark, PA-C who graduated from Keiser University Physician Assistant program in Fort Lauderdale, FL and is now a Physician Assistant!

Congratulations to Dr. Bridge!

Current Students and Alumni can nominate a faculty even posthumously. Deadline is Tuesday - December 15th. https://www.etown.edu//dean-of-faculty/faculty-awards.aspx

Alumnus, Erin Kirchmer Colfax, Class of 2000 has put her Etown degree to great use since graduating with a degree in science education She has become a science teacher, college professor, author, and world explorer. She credits the influence of Etown professors like the late Dr. Tom Murray, Dr. T. Blue, and Dr. Elizabeth Newell who still linger in her mind twenty years later. Erin is grateful for the time various professors took to personalize experiences for their students.... Erin's latest article was recently published in the Earth Scientist Journal ( The citation and link to the article: Teaching Earth and Environmental Science using Model-Evidence Link Diagrams follow... ) (Colfax, E., Matewos, A., & Bailey, J. M. (2020). Teaching Earth and environmental science using Model-Evidence Link Diagrams. The Earth Scientist, 36(3), 3135. Available online at https://www.nestanet.org//sites/d/files/journal/Fall20.pdf)

Senior, Biyar Ahmed received a grant from Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society to pursue research with Dr, Deb Wohl. He will be investigating the time between fecal sample collection and DNA processing and its impacts on the sample’s microbiome. Applications of this research include if lab processing delays can cause significant changes in the microbiome and therefore the data collected, assessing how quickly samples should be shipped, and to investigate how the possibility of banking one’s stool would function based on these findings.

Congratulations to Zachary Nawrocki who won First Place in the Competition for the Outstanding Undergraduate Poster for his research poster at the Drexel University College of Medicine Discovery Day 2020. Here is a summary of Zach's research: My research focuses on cells that are transformed with Simian Virus 40 T-antigen (SV40 T-antigen) which is one of many viruses that cause cancer. I am looking at virally caused cancer because this type of cancer accounts for 15% of all ...cancers. I specifically focus on a certain protein that is involved with allowing cancerous cells to become mobile and form a more aggressive type of cancer. The protein that I am looking at is serine/arginine-rich splicing factor 1 (SRSF1) which plays a key role in the pathway that leads to a cancerous cell’s ability to become mobile and more aggressive. There are four different forms of SRSF1 that are produced in a cell with one form in particular that is known to play a role in the pathway that leads to a more aggressive cancer cell. By looking at these four different forms of SRSF1 I am looking to see if any of these isoforms are expressed at different levels in non-cancerous cells vs. cancerous cells that are transformed with SV40 T-antigen. https://drexel.edu///graduate-school/events/discovery-day/ See more

Dr. David Bowne, Biological and Environmental Sciences, has published an instructional exercise in the peer-reviewed EcoEd Digital Library. The exercise "A Natural Process: Fostering Critical Thinking Through an Ecological Allegory" uses an original short story to promote a critical analysis of the social context of decision-making and interpretation of observations. The story is about a construction crew trying to make sense of their responsibility in the destruction of a newly built house by a displaced boulder. https://ecoed.esa.org//a_natural_process_fostering_critica

Biology Senior, Caleb Clements shares about his Internship at Eurofins: Last year, during the spring semester of my Junior year, I interned at Eurofins Lancaster Labs. While there, I learned a lot, from the day to day laboratory testing conducted throughout the campus, to how the company manages sample storage and inventory. My job mainly focused on laboratory organization and cleaning, so that the equipment that was being used daily stayed in shape and that the contents of t...Continue reading