The Department of Biological Sciences is dedicated to providing students with the greatest possible opportunity to succeed. However, we cannot provide the best education for our students without the best faculty, staff, equipment, facilities, and scholarship opportunities. Your generosity helps us make our goal of providing the best possible undergraduate and graduate experiences a reality.
You can find more information at mtu.edu/biological/giving, or contact the department chair at cpjoshi@mtu.edu.
Thank you for your support!
You could help us with these eight Initiatives!
Biological Sciences Learning Center
This dedicated Center helps ~1,500 freshman and sophomore students every year in getting adjusted to college life by helping with their homework, clarifying biological sciences concepts or providing some outlet to express themselves. We hire 6-10 coaches every year and this has been a phenomenal help in improving student satisfaction and retention.
Bioathlon
Every May for the past 30 years, we invite about 12-15 high schools to participate in a day-long competition in solving four problems related to biological sciences.
Undergraduate Student Scholarships
We would like to create one hundred scholarships, each worth $1,000 for students specializing in pre-health, ecology, BMB and Bioinformatics majors.
Medical Lab Sciences
We recently earned NAACLS accreditation for our MLS program. Students in the MLS program are required to complete a six to twelve month long clinical practicum at an affiliated hospital. We currently have no fellowships to cover these expenses for this number of students. We would like to create about 20 fellowships.
Graduate Student Fellowships
Getting a PhD requires a lot of hard work and dedication. It is even harder when you have to support yourself financially throughout the process. Fellowships would allow students to focus on their studies and allow students who may not have been able to afford it to come and get their degree.
Summer Graduate Student Scholarships
We get limited number of GTA fellowships (only 9) from the graduate school but these graduate students do not get any summer support when they could be highly productive. Instead, they have to find some summer employment to support themselves. We would like to create twenty scholarships of $10,000 each that would cover their tuition and stipends during summer months.
Endowed Professors in Biological Sciences
Our professors are doing world-class research as evidenced by their service to their profession and 86% of our faculty members are funded by external grants. However, currently we do not have any endowed professorships that could regularly support their research. They could support undergraduate or graduate students getting hands-on experience in their labs and pay for upgrading their research facilities.
Undergraduate Research Laboratories
Every year, we spend about $50,000 for upgrading our teaching labs but in order to regularly update undergraduate labs, we need to update equipment such as microscopes with adapters for cell phones, PCR machines, and multichannel automatic pipettes. We also need to cover the cost of renting research vehicles and boats.
Questions About Your Gift?
Chandrashekhar Joshi
- Emeritus Research Professor, Biological Sciences
- Affiliated Professor, CFRES
- cpjoshi@mtu.edu
- Dow 724
Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
