2016 Fact Book

52 Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography T he Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography (HCNSO) was founded in 1966 shortly after NSU itself. The college has classes on two campuses—the Oceanographic Campus at the entrance to Port Everglades, with immediate access to the Atlantic Ocean, and the Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus. The mission of the college includes carrying out innovative, basic, and applied research and providing high-quality undergraduate and graduate programs in a broad range of disciplines: natural, ocean, environmental, and biological sciences (including pre-medical and pre-health professions); mathematics; chemistry; and physics. The college serves as a community resource for information, education, and research on natural sciences, oceanography, and environmental issues. The Halmos College has more than 150 faculty and staff members, researchers, and research assistants. The student body is composed of 1,200 undergraduate students and 230 graduate students housed in four academic departments. Facilities include classrooms, laboratories, and scientific instrumentation at the Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus. The Oceanographic Campus has classrooms; research labs; coastal research vessels; a seawater system; and a silver LEED-certified, 86,000-square-foot research facility, the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Center. The center is a state-of-the- art research building with a seawater system and an experimental complex for pollution evaluation. The college’s website is http://cnso.nova.edu/ . The Halmos College focuses on providing information and developing critical thinking to prepare students in their programs of study with the tools and specialized knowledgenecessary for success. The curriculumprovides a strong science background, which helps students to develop the skills and values needed to succeed in graduate and professional study, as well as in their careers. We guide students to dedicate themselves to a lifetime of well-rounded, knowledgeable, and engaged citizenship. The college provides complementary combinations of specializations, minors, and majors relevant to satisfy academic, professional, and personal needs, as well as contributes to the NSU comprehensive general education program inmath and science. Students are encouraged to pursue classroom, field, independent, and research endeavors. The Department of Biological Sciences provides students with a strong foundation in biology at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including a graduate certificate in Computational Molecular Biology. Coursework includes general and specialized biology, anatomy and physiology, evolution, molecular biology, and genomics. The department is committed to excellence in teaching, research, and service. Under the supervision of working researchers, students have the opportunity to earn credit toward their degree by participating in cutting- edge research in a variety of biological fields including genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics. Our graduates achieve their goals of becoming doctors, dentists, pharmacists, physician assistants, and physical therapists, as well as molecular biologists, professors, and teachers. The Department of Chemistry and Physics prepares students for the modern scientific world by providing strong curricula in a chemistry major, a chemistry minor, and a physics minor. Curricula provide links with physics, biology, and mathematics. Advanced chemistry instrumentation for research and education includes atomic absorption spectrophotometry for the quantitative determination of trace chemical elements and prominent, ultra-high performance liquid chromatography for separation and quantification of organic compounds. The chemistry major prepares students for a career in chemistry-related fields; secondary-education teaching; a graduate program in chemistry; or health-related fields, such as medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, and law. Faculty members in the department are actively engaged in research with students in a wide range of subjects within chemistry and physics sub-disciplines. The Department of Mathematics provides a core curriculum in pure mathematics, applied mathematics, and analytical sciences. Through the mathematics major, mathematics minor, and applied statistics