Advanced Technology

Dickinson boasts the state-of-the-art Rector Science Complex and offers some innovative and high-tech pieces of equipment. For example, students studied oxygen consumption in the human-performance lab, reviewed and interpreted DNA sequence both by hand and using a computer program, and worked on Knoevenagel [condensation] reactions using a “green chemistry” method.

“This is just a taste of what’s coming,” Charles Zwemer, associate professor of biology, said to the summer 2010 participants. “What’s really cool is that all of this is at your disposal. In a few years you might come back and use this lab for your own research project. We’re giving you the tools by which the unknown can be addressed. You can use all of this to answer questions we don’t even know the answers to yet.”

According to Ashley Young '14, the technology was just one of the benefits of the program. “We learned how to use a lot of new equipment. We also got a leg up on incoming freshman,” she said. “We got used to the campus, met all the professors, got advice that other freshmen aren’t getting. Everything is advanced. In high school, we never got to do things like make the solutions. This is real hands-on science.”

Students gain valuable experience with a variety of tools and techniques, including: 

• nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
• use of microwave synthesis techniques
• drug preparation
• injection techniques
• recombinant DNA technology (cloning and analysis)