For the most part, M.S. students complete their course requirements (24 Credit hours) during their first year. There is the option of withholding a few credit hours for the third semester in order to take a course only offered every other year or one which couldn't be taken during the first semester due to the Core Curriculum.

The remainder of the student's experience in the program is dedicated to their own dissertation (Ph.D.) or thesis (M.S.) research. Students choose a mentor and lab to perform their research and begin progress towards successful completion of a dissertation. A dissertation project is developed and approved with the help of the student's thesis supervision committee. While working on the dissertation, students continue to participate in both journal club and the departmental seminar series. The average Ph.D. student successfully completes their dissertation in a total of 5-6 years and thesis (M.S.) work is typically completed in 2 years.

The curiosity in biology, nurtured by the acute observations of a traditional Anatomist, has progressed naturally and has become the foundation for modern biomedical research. This natural progression thus resulted in the change of the department's name in 1990 to the Loyola University Medical Center Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, as well as the expansion of the number of our faculty with a common interest in utilizing cellular and molecular approaches in biomedical cell and biological research. Because of our common interests in the molecular basis of cellular interaction, the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry joined our faculty as a Division in 2000.

Thus, research currently focuses on understanding the developmental and cellular aspects of the nervous, immune and other mammalian systems. In addition, research also focuses on the two distinct, yet inseparable disciplines of immunology and neurobiology. Important interaction between these two systems is being explored through collaboration among students and faculty in different laboratories.

Knowledge in the biomedical sciences has been accumulating at an exponential rate over the last decade. New information, while expanding our understanding of living cells at the molecular level, only points to our need to understand the interaction between cells of different organs in a living body. It is our commitment not only to provide you, the future biomedical researchers, with advanced research techniques and a current understanding of the living cell, but also to cultivate your ability to develop this same passion for assimilating modern thinking and applying it to the understanding of the whole organism to the molecular level