The Biological Sciences Graduate Fund is the department's top priority and we are shooting for a $3 million endowment. Graduate students are an essential aspect of our department's health and vitality. They contribute original ideas and person power to move research programs forward. In fact, the average number of authors on a manuscript in Biological / Biomedical research is six with two or even three graduate students contributing to each manuscript. Therefore, a robust graduate program is essential to our success. The best graduate students are highly sought after and to remain competitive we must offer support packages that are equivalent to competing insitutions. These packages include stipend and tuition, as well as university fees for the first 9 months of graduate school; this amounts to approximately $25,000 per student. This fund provides some of the resources essential to maintain competitiveness. Following the first 9 months of support, students are supported by research grants and teaching assistantships. I add parenthetically that in the Department of Biology teaching assistants staff laboratory courses and are never employed as lecturers. All lectures are taught by Ph.D. level instructors.

The Biological Sciences Development Fund provides the resources to maintain our teaching and research laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment. The technological base for experimental biology is constantly changing and this requires us to constantly replace older equipment and purchase new equipment. These innovations come on line at a very fast pace and our teaching and research mission requires our students and faculty to have access to these innovations.

The Biology Facilities Campaign Fund allows us to maintain and update our buildings. This includes our research laboratories, our teaching laboratories and all our buildings in facilities such as cold and warm rooms, as well as electrical wiring and air handling. All of these facilities are essential to a productive and smoothly operating teaching and research department.