Faculty are constantly tweaking their curriculum; I think that they are all ‘living’ programs. One major change that has occurred is the creation of a master’s degree in public health (MPH). As this program gets off the ground, a minor is also being created for students who are interested in what happened with the pandemic and how environmental concerns impact the health of people in society and various other social issues.  

We created a major and minor in life sciences, which is a broader version of biology or chemistry. It’s for people interested in working in a lab in a support role while still being around the scientific community, but not being deep in the thick of it. 

We also created a physical science program that, like life sciences, is a version that is a modification of the chemistry and physics majors, so that people who have interest in those things can get a sense of that major to help support labs and stay connected to the physics and chemistry side of science. 

These are good programs for people to explore if they’re interested in science communication; helping to communicate to the broader public what it is to be a scientist. This gives you significant exposure to what those disciplines are, without necessarily putting you on a path to go to graduate school. 

We just created a minor in astronomy. The Thomas More Observatory supports a monthly lecture series which takes place during the academic year from August to May and includes a public lecture followed by a trip to the Observatory to view of the night sky (weather permitting). Austin Hinkle, Ph.D., has a background in astrophysics and takes over the series this year. He has some interesting ideas for talks, which is part of how we created the astronomy minor. We have found a lot of interest in the lecture series. 

Biochemistry is a very popular major, it’s through the chemistry department. We’re getting more and more students every year. The department of biological sciences has several different minors. Two of them are marine biology in conjunction with Newport Aquarium, and bioinformatics which looks at big data and the computations that surround it. If you have an interest in math and biology, that is an interesting option. If you are interested in computation, in mathematical modeling, especially for biological systems, that’s an interesting option as it reaches across a variety of disciplines in terms of bringing different ideas together. We have Jyoti Saraswat, Ph.D., in the mathematics department with a background in biological modeling and Zachary Taylor, Ph.D., in biological science, in charge of the minor in bioinformatics. 

I would like to mention our mathematics department, which is very good. The faculty designed the bachelor’s degree intentionally to be a little bit smaller than many of the other science degrees, to help people match the math degree with other majors so that it’s intended to be a double major with other disciplines. My background happens to be physics, we use a lot of mathematics. I did graduate coursework in mathematics and have taught both physics and math courses. I do find that understanding mathematics enhances your understanding of every other discipline. Mathematics helps you systematize patterns; anywhere in life you see patterns, mathematics is an applicable understanding to apply to that. For any other discipline where you’re seeing patterns in life, adding a math degree is going to enhance your understanding and enable you to do things that other people aren’t doing. It adds to your resume, your background, and adds to your ability to discuss and progress in that discipline. 

For pre-professionals, we have various options. Most are through the biological sciences: pre-med, pre-dental, pre-veterinary, pre-pharmaceutical. We have pre-physical therapy, which can be approached either from the biology perspective or from exercise science – we have a program in both exercise science, and exercise and health strategies. There is also a pre-engineering program through the physics department which covers mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and electrical engineering. People have asked about pre-chemical engineering which goes through the chemistry department.  

Regarding support and advising, I mentioned the departments that those programs are presented through. People/students go to those departments for advising on how best to approach that discipline. We have a specific individual in each department familiar with the route that someone would take to prepare themselves for the next stage of that education. Sometimes that means graduate school, sometimes a professional program, i.e. pre-med would go into the medical field; engineering is set up to transfer to an undergraduate engineering program. There are different requirements depending on which school you go to and that tends to be a longer conversation in terms of: ‘What are your long-term goals? What type of job are you looking for? What area do you want to live in?’  

I’m not sure I can give you ‘this is how it works,’ as much as ‘here’s who you can talk to,’ and they can help you work through your personal interests and goals for your career. Connect that to the personal touch that Thomas More brings to the community that you won’t find at a lot of other schools; we help students achieve their goals in life. We have courses that are taught on a regular schedule, but when we have students with different needs, we have conversations within the departments about which electives need to be offered which semester to ensure that we meet the needs of the students in the program. 

All majors have experiential learning opportunities for the students. It looks a little different in the different programs. The physics/chemistry/biology group have student research projects with each affiliated with a faculty member; either a research project that the faculty member is doing, or we create a project for the individual student depending on their interests. We bring our students to regional physics, chemistry, biology, and/or Kentucky State science conferences. Every year in April, Thomas More has a Student Research Forum, where students present their research as a poster session on campus. Other students and community members come through and get a sense of the research projects that are happening.  

I will also mention exercise science and nursing. Exercise science has many co-op and internship opportunities having built relationships with over 300 different organizations which they rotate students through every year. For nursing, most of our faculty work at regional hospitals, they all contribute to the clinicals that nurses are required to perform for their education. While all schools offer clinicals in their nursing program, our school tries to keep clinicals as in-person participation to ensure hands-on interaction. We recognize that simulations allow people to have interesting and unique experiences, but we find it is valuable to see the complications that go with the real-life experience of interacting with people from diverse backgrounds and in unique and varied situations that cannot always be simulated.

The most thorough way is to go through the website. Our faculty also invite you to reach out to the departments themselves. We often have students on campus, we’re happy to give you a tour of the department, you can sit in classes (during the academic year) so that you see what it’s like to be in college classes, to get a sense of who the faculty are, to have a conversation about what the opportunities are for different majors and minors. 

We also have regular meetings of our student clubs (during the academic year) that go with each of the majors. That is an opportunity to meet college students and see what the community is like that you would be participating in on campus. 

I do think that the sciences have traditionally done an exceptionally good job for Thomas More graduates. We have a large alumni base who have finished our programs, gone on to become professionals, and come back to tell us how much they appreciate different aspects of the program. We use some of that information to reevaluate where our programs are and make sure they continue to serve what people need in the world.