Biophysics at Kalamazoo

I’m always curious how colleges and universities structure undergraduate biological physics and medical physics programs. At Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan (where I worked until I retired in 2020) we have a Medical Physics major. As a Michigander, I want to introduce you to another program in our state: the Biological Physics concentration at Kalamazoo College.

To reach Kalamazoo from where I live in Rochester Hills, which is just north of Detroit, get on I-94 and drive west about three fourths of the way across the state, until you’re roughly 40 miles from Lake Michigan. There you’ll find a small, private liberal arts college founded by Baptist ministers in 1833. Kalamazoo College is known for its flexible curriculum, with an emphasis on study abroad, internships, undergraduate research, civic engagement, and a senior capstone project (they call it the “K-plan”). I’m a fan of a liberal arts education, so their program sounds attractive to me.

All students have a major, but many also focus on a concentration, which is an interdisciplinary set of courses centered on a theme (to me, it seems like a beefed up minor). One concentration is Biological Physics. It consists of six prerequisite courses: two semesters each of physics, chemistry, and calculus. Then the required courses are two semesters of biology, organic and physical chemistry, and two specialty courses on topics such as biophysics, neuroscience, complex systems, or chaos.

The biological physics concentration is light on physics compared to OU’s medical physics program, but that’s probably because it’s a concentration and not a major. A combination of a Kalamazoo physics major with the biophysics concentration would provide the strong base in physics I would want. But the biological physics concentration might also be appealing to students who seek a deeper math and physics background than a biology major would supply. Also, the concentration has a lot of overlap with the curriculum required to get into medical school. I would guess it attracts premed students (at least the ones who are not afraid of math, which is just a handful).

At Oakland we have a two-semester course sequence of Biological Physics and Medical Physics that’s based on Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. The course at Kalamazoo most similar to these appears to be the Biophysics course (PHYS 205). The catalog description is given below. I put in italics the parts covered in IPMB.

PHYS 205 Biophysics 

How can we observe and comprehend the size and scale of living systems? How can we use physics to aid our understanding of biology? How large are bacteria and viruses? What size of torque can molecular motors develop? How does the flexibility of a molecule contribute to its biological function? What is the scale of membrane potentials? How efficient are different organisms at encoding their genes? Which animal can jump the highest per its size? How can we make sense of vast amounts of complex and sometimes “messy” biological data? This course is an introduction to the advantages and limitations of using physical techniques and models to address biological questions. We will focus on molecular-scale systems and dynamics, with topics to include modeling dynamic molecules and systems, optics and microscopy, physical properties of biomolecules and gaining numerical literacy. We will explore current biophysical research and help you develop the interdisciplinary toolset to engage with it.

I see a lot of overlap with IPMB, but clearly there is more of a molecular emphasis in PHYS 205.

What’s the perfect preparation for graduate study and a career in biological physics? I suggest students follow Kalamazoo’s Biological Physics concentration, but during the first summer after they complete the required prerequisite courses in physics and math, they rent an isolated cabin along Lake Michigan and spend three months reading and working the homework problems in the 6th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, taking an hour off each evening to watch the sun set over the lake. Now that would be a great program!