WKU News

“I like the fact that you can answer questions about things that were previously unanswerable,” Andrew S. Jackson, a senior originally from Beaver Dam, KY said about his field of study. 

Jackson, who previously worked as a union boilermaker for almost 20 years, is a nontraditional student pursuing a degree in Molecular Biotechnology at Western Kentucky University.

“I worked on a research project as an undergraduate in Dr. Jarrett Johnson’s lab, in which we were examining the genetic structure of stoneflies in Appalachia and the Southeastern United States. Although the question posed is of an ecological nature, we were able to use molecular techniques to derive an answer,” Jackson said.

Molecular Biotechnology at WKU allows students to be part of developments like genomics, personalized medicine, cloning, organoid research, stem cell research, and genome editing. The skills acquired may be applied to the development of new pharmaceutical drugs or other medical products, industrial chemicals, food products, energy sources, pollution-control products, or agricultural products.

When researching institutions, Jackson came across WKU’s Molecular Biotechnology program and found the coursework descriptions interesting. 

“Once I was on campus and started attending the required Contemporary Biotechnology Issues course, it gave me an opportunity to meet and start to network with like-minded people,” he said.

As a nontraditional student, Jackson valued the need to balance home life and school. WKU was able to provide that as well as a program that directly tied into his career goals. 

“When I first started courses at WKU, I was unsure what this major was, but I knew that I wanted to do something that set me apart from everyone else,” Jackson said. “During my first meeting with my advisor, Dr. Ajay Srivastava, we discussed what the coursework was. Afterwards, when I was thinking about everything we had gone over, I knew that this was the path I wanted to take.”

Upon graduation this spring, Jackson plans to enroll as a graduate student here at WKU, focusing on a traditional thesis and eventually go on to get a Ph.D.