About

The Science Department currently serves as the integrated science department for Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges and is administered cooperatively. Founded in 1964, the department is housed in the 81,000 square-foot W.M. Keck Science Center, physically located at the intersection of the three sponsor schools. The Department is in the process of transitioning to the Pitzer-Scripps Science Department. This transition will be completed in summer 2025. Pitzer and Scripps Colleges are currently constructing an addition to the Science Center, the Nucleus, which will nearly double the size of our facilities.  The building addition is scheduled to be open for the Fall 2024 semester.  The department, which has about 3600 enrollments per year, has a multidisciplinary structure in which approximately 50 full-time faculty cooperate in offering a challenging curriculum that includes interdisciplinary study and research. Once transitioned to the two-college department, the number of students that the department serves will be approximately 66% of current enrollments. At the same time, we intend to increase the number of tenure-line faculty in the department by approximately 20% 

The Claremont Colleges

The Claremont Colleges is a consortium of five undergraduate liberal arts colleges (Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona, and Scripps) and two graduate institutions (Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute). Although the mission of each institution is distinct, all promote the teacher-scholar model, in which faculty maintain active research programs and develop and teach creative courses.

The make-up of our student body

Our Department serves a combined student body of approximately 3,600 students, many of whom are science majors who continue in research or medical careers. Annual enrollments have grown steadily from about 2,100 in 2003-2004 to almost 3,000 in 2011-2012 to approximately 3600 in 2021-2022. Science enrollments have grown faster than overall enrollments at the three sponsor colleges, indicating a sharp increase in interest in science among our students.  In the three most recent years, approximately 40% of the enrollments came from Scripps students, 34% from CMC students, and 25% from Pitzer students; with the remaining enrollments coming from Harvey Mudd, and Pomona. But regardless of their home institution, all students find a warm welcome in our department.

Diversity of our academic offerings

We offer full major programs in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, along with a number of interdisciplinary programs such as Neuroscience, Science and Management, Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP), and Environmental Science.

The role of research in our students' academic experience

Research is central to our department and has grown along with the number of students and faculty members.  In the past decade, several hundred of our Science students were co-authors with faculty on peer-reviewed articles or published abstracts.  Over the same period more than 100 of our Science students have also had their work accepted for presentation at professional scientific meetings, including those held by the American Chemical Society, the Society for Neuroscience, the American Physical Society, the American Society for Cell Biology, the Genetics Society of America, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

Every one of the nearly 200 students who graduate annually with a science major from our department has an opportunity to participate in a substantive research project—either in the academic year as a senior thesis research student, for research credit in a faculty member’s lab, or during the summer as a research fellow.

Our department and its faculty receive an average of over one million dollars of new federal and foundational funding for research each year.

Where do our Science students go after graduation?

In the past 5 years, the department has had an average of nearly 200 graduates. Many graduates pursue advanced degrees in science, medicine, and other health professions in such prestigious graduate and professional schools such as UCSF, UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Davis, Stanford, USC, Washington University (St. Louis), Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Johns Hopkins. Others enter the teaching profession or earn a second degree in engineering through one of our dual programs. Collectively, our alumni are making their mark in a wide variety of fulfilling careers.