Biology

This is a friendly and academically challenging environment in which Biology students thrive and receive the support needed to achieve their full potential. Given the size of St Hilda's Biology community, the College is in a good position to provide strong training in this subject. We aim to make the study of Biology here at all levels both enjoyable and academically rigorous.

Biology students across the University work towards the same degree and all Biology lectures and practicals are taught centrally at the Biology department. The colleges provide tutorial support and the team of tutors at St Hilda's has a wide expertise to support students with a diverse range of interests throughout their course. We have a strong tutorial team of two Biology Tutorial Fellows and several lecturers, who provide a range of knowledge on areas from Ecology and Evolutionary Biology to Molecular Genetics and Statistics. Between them, they cover a very diverse range of topics in Biology, from plants and animals to viruses and bacteria.

One of the advantages of St Hilda's is that we cover a lot of the compulsory courses in-house through the college tutors, especially during the first year, and for the evolution and quantitative methods aspects during the second year. We cover many of the specialist options through the college and in the third year, students have the freedom to choose from a range of tutors in specialist areas from St Hilda's and from other colleges.

Due to generous bequests we are fortunate to be able to offer substantial financial help towards the cost of overseas expeditions to conduct the work for ecological, conservation, systematics, and other projects. We encourage students to make the most of this opportunity.

Our Biology graduates have gone on to a diverse set of careers, with further research work in the subject being one of the mainstreams. Students graduating with 2.1 or better degree are entitled to proceed straight into PhD (DPhil) program, but many graduates choose to do one of the Masters courses available to further their knowledge in the area of interest. Other options, such as work in industry, or teaching are also popular.