STLCC offers many science courses for students, even those not pursuing scientific majors
BY: BRENDAN SMITH
Staff Writer
The science pathway at St. Louis Community College is vast and contains many classes to choose from and programs to discover. Students might have a hard time deciding on what classes to take or what programs to follow for multiple years. The easiest place for students not looking for a science related degree to start looking is the non-lab courses. These classes tend to be less complicated than courses with labs attached.
Dean of Science Jim Munden talked about the different types of non-lab courses.
“We have a set of courses. Usually they’re titled non-lab courses, those are the ‘easy credits’ if you really want to think about it like that,” said Munden. “For liberal arts majors there’s earth science classes or geology. There’s our BIO 109 class, that’s akin to what you would get in like high school anatomy and physiology classes.”
For those looking for degrees in a science field, but not quite sure where to look, STLCC also has science programs for students to get involved. One of the most prominent being Horticulture.
Horticulture Program Coordinator Jerry Pence gave an overview of what horticulture classes are like.
“Horticulture is the art and science of plants, we take the science part of plants, the makeup part of plants and the physiology of the plants and we combine that with how to use that in the real world,” said Pence. “People who enter our program are typically students who don’t want to sit behind a desk for their career, and this is a way to get them in a lab, in a greenhouse or outside in the garden classroom. They like to get their hands dirty.”
Horticulture isn’t the only science program at STLCC. Biotechnology is another science program the school offers.
“Biotechnology is the application of biological principles in the lab. Students that want to work in the lab, like a research lab, or pharmaceuticals or something akin to that, they would pursue biotech,” Dean Munden said. “Students in the biotech program are seeing jobs like laboratory tech and research associates.”
Starting in either program is decently simple, starting with classes associated with the subject towards the bottom and working the way up.
“Our kickoff class is HRT 101, which is introductory horticulture. We have plant identification courses, and soils courses. Those kinds of classes give them [students] an idea of what Horticulture is,” Professor Pence said.
STLCC science is a massive pathway, where most people are able to find something that interests them, even if only for a semester.
“I would encourage any student that is interested in STEM or health science or any of the other programs to look at what we have to offer and see if it fits what they’re interested in and talk to the program coordinators or academic advisors about what careers in that field looks like,” Dean Munden said.
