The Sciences at Furman

Biology—

Biology is Furman's largest science department and one of the largest departments on campus, with 13 full-time faculty and 50 to 60 graduates per year.

Biology strongly supports a multidisciplinary approach to research and teaching. Current external grants support collaborative research within the department, between biologists and chemists, between biologists and earth scientists, and between biologists and computer scientists.

Furman's medical-school acceptance rate is currently 75 percent, approximately double the national average, and our students average about 3 points above the national norm on the MCAT. Premedical students come from a wide range of academic majors, but about half of them are biology majors, and conversely about half the biology majors pursue health-related careers.

Current and recent biology majors include a Fulbright scholar (David Bumpass '03), Goldwater Scholar (Jess Riddle '05) and Udall Scholar (Adrienne DuBois '06).

Chemistry—

Among predominantly undergraduate institutions, Furman is third in the nation in the number of American Chemical Society certified BS chemistry graduates and fourteenth among all colleges and universities.

Chemistry is sixth nationwide among undergraduate departments for graduates receiving PhDs.

It is demonstrably the best-equipped undergraduate chemistry department nationwide and the most successful at obtaining National Science Foundation undergraduate research funding.

Chemistry enabled Furman to be one of only four undergraduate institutions to receive a Beckman Scholars Award in 2002.

Current chemistry majors include two Goldwater scholars (John Dickson '06 and Michael Vagnini '07).

Earth & Environmental Science—

River Basins Research Initiative (RBRI), a large interdisciplinary research program involving EES, biology and chemistry, has been continuously funded since 1997 by state, federal and foundation sources.

The RBRI has an ongoing collaboration with the Universidad Metropolitano in Puerto Rico .

Two EES faculty are actively involved in the geologic mapping of the Upstate with support from the South Carolina Geological Survey.

Approximately 13 percent of EES graduates continue on towards the PhD.

Physics—

The national average among all institutions for graduating physics majors is about three per year. Furman is graduating ten to fourteen per year.

100 percent of our students who seek admissions to graduate programs in physics or engineering are admitted into the program of their choice.

Through physics, Furman is a founding member of UNISOR/UNIRIB, one of the oldest research consortia in higher education. Other member universities include Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, LSU and the University of Tennessee .

Recent physics graduates include a Rhodes scholar (Robert W. Johnson '95) and a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard (Robin McGary Herrnstein '98).