Botany

Plants are diverse and beautiful, and they're critical to ecosystems, climate regulation, and providing nutrition and medicinal compounds. The work of plant scientists is central to sustaining the global food supply, mitigating climate change, maintaining biological diversity, restoring degraded lands, and developing life-saving pharmaceuticals.

About the Major

The Botany major offers a foundation in biological principles with specialized courses in plant physiology, plant genetics, systematics, and ecology. As a Botany major you learn to identify, alter or manage the diversity & complexity of Earth’s flora.

Keywords: agriculture, botanical research, forestry, landscape design, horticulture, ecology, conservation, advanced research, laboratory science, field research, food supply, sustainability, environmental science, environmental education, health, medicine, pharmaceuticals.

Other majors in the Biological Sciences:

Biology Microbiology Genetics
Zoology Pre-Professional Zoology Neuroscience
Environment & Sustainability Health & Human Kinetics Biochemistry

Related Minors

Think Big

Original research, performed under faculty mentors, is a central component of The OWU Connection.

Students are encouraged to seek distinctive learning, research, and field experiences, which can include independent study, summer research at OWU or other institutions, or OWU-funded Connection Grants. You can present your research at the Student Symposium in the spring.

Research & Independent Study

Insights from Alaska

Alix Templeman '19 studied plant responses to climate change with Dr. Laurie Anderson as part of a Travel-Learning Course to Alaska.

Plants in Space

Maddie Meyer '19, Samantha Fedoush '19, and Ana Borish '19 conducted research with Professor Chris Wolverton to characterize an unknown mechanism in mutant plants that allows them to sense and account for gravity. Their research is the control experiment that helped in the interpretation of experimental data from flight.

NASA Project

Onyinye Okoli ’16 and Susannah Waxman ’16 were part of a team of students working with Professor Chris Wolverton conducting research on how plants grow in space for a project that flew on the International Space Station in 2017-18.

Watch the Video

Mapping Plants in Africa

Katie Vonderembse ’19, working with Drs. David Johnson and Nancy Murray, created maps using GIS software to develop a better understanding of the evolution and classification of Xylopia in Sub-Saharan Africa and to help develop conservation plans.

Go Global

From your first year on campus, you can get off campus with Travel-Learning Courses, a key part of The OWU Connection. Journey to a distant land and immerse yourself in another landscape and culture.

Recent Travel-Learning Courses have taken botany and biology students to Brazil, Costa Rica, East Africa, the Galapagos Islands, and Alaska.

Travel-Learning Courses

Utah Ecosystems

Professor Laurie Anderson’s Plant Communities & Ecosystems class traveled to Utah to observe how plant communities adapt to different elevations.

Watch the Video

Exploring "The Last Frontier"

Armando Polizzi '19 traveled to Alaska with Drs. Craig Jackson and Laurie Anderson's co-taught "Mathematical Models of Climate" and "Plant Responses to Global Change" Travel-Learning Courses.

Get Real

Botany students have held internships at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University, Michigan State’s Plant Genomics Program, the Morton Arboretum at the University of Chicago, and the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis.

Students can receive OWU-funded grants to put theory into practice, in lab and field research around the world.

Internships Theory-to-Practice Grants

Plant Collections

Botany major Susannah Waxman ’16 had an internship with plant collections management on the OWU campus in the arboretum, herbarium, and greenhouse in 2014.

Studying Invasive Species

Aidan Shumaker '20 spent the summer studying greenhouse gas emissions underneath invasive Amur Honeysuckle and native Spicebush shrub species with Dr. Laurie Anderson. His research was conducted as part of the Summer Science Research Program.

University of Wisconsin

Jordan Brown ’18 experienced the rigors of graduate-level research through summer research positions at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He moved on to Wisconsin’s graduate biotechnology program.

Inspired Teaching

OWU faculty are outstanding scholars and researchers—and passionate teachers. They will push you, challenge you, inspire you, and work with you on your own research and creative projects.

They can even pack a 3-minute lecture with ideas, insight, and imagination. Check out our unique I³ lectures.

I³ Lectures

How do plants "know" which direction is up?

Chris Wolverton describes why studying how plants grow in space will help us here on Earth (and beyond).

Watch the Video

Dr. Laurie Anderson

Rainforests, Cloud Fountains, and the Flying River of Brazil

Watch the Video

Highlights

Field Sites & Greenhouse

Ohio Wesleyan maintains multiple “living labs.” At OWU, you’ll find a campus arboretum, the Moore Greenhouse with almost 500 specimens from around the world, and two forested nature preserves a short drive from campus.

More information

Summer Research

Students have the opportunity to engage full-time in original research with faculty mentors, with free on-campus housing and a generous stipend for 10 weeks in the summer. Students present their findings at an all-college symposium and often also at national and international conferences.

More information

A Global Catalog

OWU’s herbarium (botanical museum), housed in the Schimmel Conrades Science Center, contains some 16,000 pressed and dried plant specimens from around the world, many of them dating back to the 1800s. Today the collection is actively used in teaching botany courses and for student research.

Student Awards

The Botany & Microbiology Department presents three major student awards each spring The awards, which recognize academic and research excellence and service to the department, all include monetary gifts.

More information

Graduate Outcomes

Jenna Reeger '14

Jenna is a graduate research assistant at Penn State University, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in plant biology. She majored in Botany and Chemistry at OWU.

Pathway to Graduate School

Graduate Study

Recent biological science grads are attending graduate programs at the following universities: Auburn, Case Western Reserve, Cornell, George Washington, Michigan State, Pennsylvania State, Purdue, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, and Bren Fellow, Rio de Janeiro

Diverse Careers

OWU biological science graduates are working around the globe in highly varied fields. Examples of employment include: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Mayo Clinic, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Ohio Seed Improvement Association, Tiger Optics.

Headlines

Events

A Look at Botany

See All 12 Items
Funky rhizomes

Funky rhizomes
Soil samples

Soil samples

I³ Lecture by Dr. Laurie Anderson— Rainforests, cloud fountains, and the flying river of Brazil

I³ Lecture by Dr. Laurie Anderson

Rainforests, cloud fountains, and the flying river of Brazil
Blue fruits

Blue fruits

Plant Studies— Botany majors Cindy Hastings '17 and Nathan Madonich '16.

Plant Studies

Botany majors Cindy Hastings '17 and Nathan Madonich '16.

Department Contact Info

Location

Schimmel/Conrades Science Center
Ohio Wesleyan University
Delaware, OH 43015
P 740-368-3907
F 740-368-3999
E jaarlington@owu.edu

Department Contact

Chair: Chris Wolverton
Professor of Biological Sciences
Schimmel/Conrades Science Center 339
740-368-3503
scwolver@owu.edu

Academic Assistant: Judy Arlington
Schimmel/Conrades Science Center 201
740-368-3907
jaarlington@owu.edu