Teaching Facilities

The Departmental teaching facilities are housed in Lisner Hall and (mainly) in Bell Hall immediately next door. Separate laboratory rooms are dedicated to teaching Introductory Biology for Science Majors (BiSc 11-12) and Introductory Biology for Non-science Majors (BiSc 3-4). Additional laboratories hold specialized research equipment and facilities (listed below) to support the advanced courses. Departmental facilities also include a large conference room/library and two greenhouses. Recently renovated classrooms provide comfortable chairs and extensive multi-media presentation equipment. Computer equipment is available in many of the teaching labs, which are connected to the internet with T10 fiber optic cable; the University also supplies many computer labs networked throughout the campus and in the dormitories.

Research Facilities

Faculty offices are located on the 3rd and 4th floors of Lisner Hall, 2023 G Street NW. The Department's laboratories in Bell Hall house excellent facilities for research in most aspects of the biological sciences, including a cold room, animal care facilities, fully equipped molecular biology laboratories, a photographic dark room, a microscopy room with a state-of-the-art Leo SEM, a common instrumentation room, a computer room with scanners and microcomputers, fossil preparation rooms, a DNA sequence facility with an automated capillary sequencer, and two greenhouses. Two vans and a four-wheel drive vehicles are available for faculty and student field work. All of the laboratories and offices are connected to the internet with fiber optic cable. Facilities available in the GW Institute for Biomedical Studies include a microchemistry core facility with an oligonucleotide synthesizer and an EM and confocal microscopy suite. Gelman Library and Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library at GW house 1.38 million volumes and are part of the Washington Research Libraries Consortium, facilitating loans among area university libraries.

Graduate students utilize the research labs of their faculty advisors and may also work in off-campus laboratories. Faculty laboratories also sponsor special research projects of undergraduate students, or undergraduates may volunteer to work on the research of a faculty member.