A brand new episode of the Program Pod has dropped, and this time, host Jay Varga sits down with Rowan College at Burlington County 3+1 biology student Francesca Martelli and Assistant Professors of Biology Shannon Meadows and Anne Tokazewski.
The Program Pod, a two-time award-winning podcast on RCBC’s Podcast Network, dives deep into the college's programs through the perspectives of students, faculty, and employers. In this episode, Varga gets to the bottom of Martelli's student experience, the educational and career backgrounds of both Meadows and Tokazewski, and finds out how much fun biology can be.
In a specific discussion, Professor Tokazewski, who was also one of the original architects of RCBC's 3+1 biology program back in 2015, reflects on several pathways one can take when majoring in biology.
“I think one that a lot of people tend to go into is health sciences,” Professor Tokazewski said. “And then I would say conservation, ecology… then we have folks who tend to be more interested in sort of a biochemical pathway, who are interested in molecular biology, pharmacology, those sorts of things.”
“I feel like there's something for everyone… there are so many scopes to it, there are so many pathways, I think there really is something for everybody,” Martelli added.
Besides her duties teaching classes such as immunology and parasitology, Professor Meadows is also the principal investigator for the Science Education Alliance - Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) program for RCBC, an undergraduate research course on viruses, as she explains in this episode.
“The students collect soil samples… you've got to go out into the field, grab the samples, and we bring them back to the lab… And so we have a host bacterium, and we basically extract the soil, expose it to the bacterium, and see if there's anything that kills the bacterium, and then from there, we actually go on and isolate the phages,” Professor Meadows explained.
Martelli experienced the program for herself for the first time last fall.
“A big reason why I actually decided to do the SEA-PHAGES program was that I felt, like, adequate in a lab, but I didn't necessarily feel really confident,” she said in the episode. “And so after I went through that for a semester, I feel like I really can exist in a lab and know my way around.”
Hear plenty more about the RCBC biology program and the world of biology itself with the whole episode of the Program Pod available to listen to at rcbc.edu/podcast or anywhere you get your podcasts. The podcast is also available to watch on YouTube.
RCBC’s biology program lays a strong foundation for anyone preparing for a career in science, planning to transfer to a four-year university, or simply curious about the natural world. To learn more, visit RCBC’s biology program page. Head to biology’s 3+1 page to learn more about how you can earn an associate and bachelor’s degree in biology through one seamless, affordable pathway.
