The department offers students a wide variety of research opportunities with concentrations in two areas: Cellular and Molecular Biology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Howard University was founded in 1867 during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. Botany and Zoology, along with Medicine, were among the first departments established, when Howard University was founded in 1867, to represent the life sciences at the university.
The Department of Zoology was established in 1907 under the leadership of its first chairman, Dr. Ernest Just, who held this position until 1938. Botany, first offered as a course at Howard in 1867, was later established as a department in 1922, with Dr. Thomas W. Turner as its head. Both departments eventually found a new home in the Biology Greenhouse Building in the 1950's, and developed specializations in a variety of fields, including: Botany, Cytology, Embryology, Genetics, Parasitology and Protozoology.