Behind the Scenes with the B.S. in Biology

The B.S. in Biology has experienced rapid growth in registration, enrollment, and faculty size since its launch in January 2025. The program includes at-home lab work for hands-on experience that is crucial to students looking to enter graduate schools and professions in the sciences, setting it apart from other online alternatives where students access labs virtually.

The faculty are active researchers who extend opportunities for students to get involved. Ahead, three of them share their experiences for a peek behind the curtain: Julie Parato, B.S. in Biology program director and assistant professor, Matt Schmidt, visiting assistant professor, and Kevin Woo, professor and chair of the Department of Natural Sciences. Parato joined Empire State University in 2020—at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schmidt has been with the university for 31 years, and Woo is nearing the 16-year mark.

What do you teach?

Parato: Mostly biology classes, with a focus on upper-level neuroscience courses because it’s my background.  

Schmidt: Most of us have a wide array of things we teach. For me, it’s genetics, evolution, and microbiology, among others.

Woo: I teach animal behavior, ecology, conservation, biology, evolution, and various courses in organismal and ecological-level biology. Occasionally, I’ll do things in environmental science like the Ecology and Earth Systems Field Research course.

What does a day in your life look like?

Parato: It’s a bit all over the place! When we teach, since we are an online university, the professors act as a facilitator. We give the students feedback while they are learning on their own time. I’m active in my field, so right now, a huge chunk of my time is spent trying to get some projects up and running that are supposed to start in March—which terrifyingly, is only next week.

Schmidt: Being one of the old-fashioned types, I spend about half of my teaching doing Teams meetings with students one-on-one or in small groups—just because that was the way it used to be before all the fancy technology.

Woo: I would say two thirds of what I do right now are dedicated to department chair work. The best part of it is thinking about investment in faculty. They come to me with questions about operations, scholarship, service, and it’s about finding ways to support faculty in various opportunities. I get a number of student queries, which we try to triage before they escalate. I act as a sort of go-between for student issues and assess whether they need the Dean’s attention. Then, there are a gazillion committees that the department chair needs to sit in on. When I get to teach, I primarily do independent studies and virtual study groups, and mentor as well.

How would you describe the program’s culture, and what makes it feel like a community?

Parato: The B.S. in Biology was the first structured program that Natural Sciences offered. When we were told we could begin to offer structured programs, biology seemed like a good choice because I was thinking about what our students would need to be successful in applying to graduate school and getting jobs. We made this program because we thought it would be more easily understood by the outside world.

In terms of making it feel like a community, it’s thanks to people like Matt and Kevin who run these independent studies and virtual study groups. Many of our courses have a discussion board component to them, and there’s a chunk of students who take those interactions very seriously. It’s nice to watch them start to make friends with each other. We build community that way.

Students also get to talk about labs with each other. They’re working with their hands, not only reading and studying—doing that laboratory component and talking about it also fosters a sense of community.

Schmidt: As far as community goes, I think all the different modalities go together. The faculty community is very strong, supportive, and friendly. I’ve had group meetings with students who are pursuing similar things, and I feel that they really appreciate it because while it’s great to be the master of your own destiny, it can potentially be isolating if you’re not interacting with anybody.

Woo: The B.S. in Biology has certainly been a long time coming, and it’s something we needed as a department and university. One of the main features is accessibility—SUNY Empire has a long history of distance learning in the online environment. The sciences used to be thought of as a service area for a long time. We had primarily only done general education courses. But we were hearing from students that they sincerely wanted careers in the sciences.

The biology program was the fastest-growing program during the 2025-2026 academic year. We’ve seen significant growth in the number of registrations—we had a growth of almost 12% across all our natural sciences courses. Our faculty has also grown 50% within the last two years, and I think that is a culmination of student interest and the desire to be professionals in the sciences. It’s encouraging locally and federally to see students seeking professional opportunities in STEM fields.  

Biology is often thought of as a very hands-on, lab-based discipline. How does the B.S. in Biology bring that dimension into online learning?

Parato: This is a real strength of the program. There are distance learning online biology programs that only offer virtual labs, but as an educator and researcher, it’s incredibly important that students learn how to actually do a laboratory experiment—how to set things up, how to troubleshoot.

Labs are heavily interspersed throughout the foundational classes, because that’s really where students have to learn what I call having a “lab-smart” sense—learning how to use their hands, figuring out written instructions and turning them into an actual experiment. This is important for students who go on to join a lab or a graduate program. The fact that we do this is a benefit to the students because it makes our degree transferable to graduate schools that aren’t looking for online-only laboratory experience.

There are biological supply companies, like Carolina, that we use for our lab kits. We work with Carolina to set up the supplies that students need into one kit, and then students can purchase it and have it sent to their home. Students complete the labs at their homes and document their work through pictures. Carolina has tutorial videos on how to set things up. We are also working on making some additional recordings to put into our courses. And, of course, we have excellent tutors who are always willing to work with students who have questions.

Woo: The ways we do the labs are evolving. We are trying to think outside the box about how else we can be helpful to students engaging with the laboratories so they can execute them from beginning to end.

What usually draws students to this program, and how is the department prepared to help them thrive?

Parato: We get a mix of students. Historically, our student population was thought to be students who were returning to school or adult learners. But in our biology program, we get students who have just left high school. Part of that may be that people got used to online learning during COVID, and they realize they can do an undergraduate degree online now. These are more traditional students who want to pursue a biology degree to go to graduate school.

We have people who have earned associate degrees at other schools and work in a more clinical field, but they are not able to progress in their career without a bachelor’s degree. SUNY Empire is good about taking transfer credit, but we also intentionally built the biology program to accommodate these students who have taken lower-level coursework at other institutions, and it feeds nicely into our program.

Sometimes we get students who want a change in their career—I have a student right now who has a master’s degree in a non-science field and is also a lover of paleontology. He’s a researcher at heart, but he needs to get a more foundational college degree in biology before he can move forward. We get a variety of students, and it’s excellent that we’re able to help such a diverse group of learners coming to our university.

Schmidt: I love that we’re seeing younger students enroll. Certainly, the pandemic was not a good thing, but I think in a strange way it gave some validity to online learning that people had not embraced before then.

Woo: Many of our faculty are engaged in active research, so students who are seeking graduate placement might want that kind of research experience, like conference presentations or publications. We are carving out these opportunities where students can work with faculty of the Department of Natural Sciences on research projects.

We are lucky to have been recently awarded a grant that supports student presentations at conferences, and that’s coordinated in conjunction with the Dean of Students, Melissa Aponte.

What is a resource you recommend to students or rely on as a faculty member?

Parato: PubMed is an excellent resource. It’s a search engine for biomedical articles—both review articles and experimental articles. It’s a resource that students can use even after they graduate if they are interested in reading more about a topic in biology, medicine, health science, and more.

Schmidt: While not strictly related to Biology, I like to have students browse Scientific American. There are many fascinating articles there.

Woo: We have been employing more open educational resources (OERs) to both significantly reduce the cost and increase accessibility of these tools within our courses. For Animal Behavior, we might use Behayve or ZooMonitor to conduct and record behavioral observations and automate data organization. For data, students and I would use Jamovi when conducting analyses relevant to experimental and observation projects.

What is your favorite part about being involved with the program?

Parato: Seeing students graduate. What makes me the happiest are those emails where they say: “Just checking in, but I’m on my way out. Thanks for everything.”

Also, echoing what we’ve already said, we talk a lot about our programs at department meetings and with each other. There’s such a synergy among the faculty—I think everyone is motivated to make sure this program is successful, and that our students can leave here with the opportunities that they want. In part, I think it’s because we are a great group.

Schmidt: Not unpredictably to those who know me, the best part for me is when I’m meeting one-on-one with a student. It’s not like, “here’s the professor, and here’s the student.” It’s more of a collaborative learning experience where two or three minds are exploring together.

That’s the reason I went into biology in the first place. Many times, a question they ask or an observation they make might lead me a bit deeper into my own thoughts, things that I might have left out, or things that I forgot about for a while. So, that moment of “wow, this really is important to understanding the world around me and my own life” that reverberates back and forth is very fulfilling to me.

Woo: I look forward to commencement. I think SUNY Empire has the best graduations of any institution I’ve ever been at. You get a sense of sincere appreciation and accomplishments from students who have worked so hard—students who have families taking care of children, taking care of elderly relatives, working two to three additional jobs. They’re doing all the work they need to do, and meeting expectations among all their personal commitments as well. When they arrive at the end, there is a grander sense of achievement.

Once they cross the stage, and they’re seeking professions in STEM, they’re the representatives and stewards of the university. They’re going out there with the SUNY Empire name, and we have to ensure that they are not only fulfilled by their time here, but that they can say to others that the university has a great B.S. in Biology program. I think that circular approach creates a sort of positive feedback loop. It’s not only great for the program itself, but also for the future of the sciences.