Planning Your Program

The integrated quantitative science course gives students the opportunity to learn introductory concepts and techniques from the five disciplines in one cohesive course with a fully integrated, discovery-based laboratory component. The course meets five days a week for two semesters with an additional three-hour lab once a week and a weekly problem session. Students will receive two units per semester (a total of four units) for the course. For comparison, students taking all five of the introductory courses in biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer science would receive five units of credit, but would be required to participate in twice the number of lab hours per week.

The broad-based exposure to ideas and techniques from a variety of areas is excellent preparation for graduate work in any of the sciences as well as mathematics and computer science. Students considering a career in medicine also benefit from this course.

The course will be team-taught by five faculty members each semester, one from each of the five disciplines represented. Each faculty member will attend all of the classes, exploring connections between disciplines along with the students. In collaboration with the faculty, students will coordinate undergraduate research projects to be conducted during the summer following their first year at Richmond.

A follow-up research training seminar will be available to students who have completed the course. The seminar will feature speakers from the University's faculty and employees from external labs who will describe their work and the importance of multidisciplinary approaches that tackle important, cutting-edge research problems in areas such as drug design, stem cell research and nanoscience.