Marci J. Swede, Chair

Professor, Biology 

Phone: 860-343-5782

Email: mswede@mxcc.commnet.edu

Office Location: Wheaton 209

Marci Swede is the chair of the Science, Allied Health and Engineering Division at MxCC, loves a learning environment that encourages students to be open-minded and willing to explore the unknown – which are crucial and fun elements of science. When this exists, learning and growth naturally occur. 

To create such an environment at MxCC, Marci has developed a simple teaching philosophy: create a partnership between student and professor. When professors are passionate and excited about the material they teach, students will respond.

Marci believes that educators are preparing students to be future professionals for their chosen field – but are also preparing students to become educated citizens who have influence locally and nationally. As such, she believes teachers have a responsibility to educate students not only for career goals but also for full participation in society.

Marci began lecturing in biology at MxCC in 2000 and has steadily worked to become part of the full-time faculty teaching biochemistry, organic chemistry, genetics, and microbiology courses.

Some of her highlights at MxCC include working on the development of the biotechnology and forensic science degree programs at the college, and helping secure an articulation agreement with MxCC and the University of New Haven’s Department of Forensic Science.  She also was involved in the pilot for the Honors Degree Program and currently is developing an “Introduction to Public Health” course.

For MxCC, Marci secured several important grants: 

•  UCONN Health Center Health (UCHC) Education Initiative grant, which allowed her to develop a career ladder for public health between UCHC and the community colleges in Connecticut

• The Dorr Foundation Grant which funded the purchase of scientific equipment to enhance the biotechnology and pre-allied health curriculum at MxCC
• A Perkins Grant for funding for scientific equipment to enhance the biotechnology program curriculum

She is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, Genetic Society of America, and Yale-New Haven Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Society Member.  She serves as a member of the Institutional Review Board at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, as a member of the Institutional Review Board Community at Wesleyan University, and as a board member and faculty representative for the Middlesex Community College Foundation.

Marci received the American Society for Microbiology President’s Award and the New York State Regents' Scholarship Award.  She was a member of the National Honor Society (1983-1985) and was a semi-finalist for the National Merit Scholarship Award in 1985.

Prior to joining MxCC, Marci worked as patent scientific advisor on the preparation of supporting documentation for U.S. and foreign patent prosecution at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe in La Jolla, Calif.  She also worked for Vyrex Corporation in La Jolla as a senior scientist and consultant on the development of a high throughput gene discovery and functional genomics platform.

She has written numerous publications and abstracts on genetics, gene expression, gene mapping, and biosynthesis. 

Marci was a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington University at St. Louis, studying the role of cdc25 in thymic development in mice.  While there, she received the National Center for Genome Research Postdoctoral Grant.  She also was a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Washington University at St. Louis, researching chromatin structure in Drosophila melanogaster.

She earned her Ph.D. in genetics and biochemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, with a dissertation on the regulation of the phospholipid biosynthetic genes in yeast.  She received an American Heart Association Pre-doctoral Grant to support her research at Carnegie Mellon. She received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., with her undergraduate research focusing on phenotypic and molecular analysis of the vnd locus in Drosophila neural development. For this research, she was awarded an Undergraduate Research Program Grant Fellow.