Bridget Jacques-Fricke is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Hamline and teaches courses in the Neuroscience program. Her scientific career began at a small liberal arts college, the University of Minnesota-Morris, where she created her own interdisciplinary program to study neuroscience by becoming a double major in Biology and Psychology. She went on to earn a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota. Before coming to Hamline, Dr. Jacques-Fricke was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Carleton College.
Dr. Jacques-Fricke is a developmental neuroscientist and her research interests involve understanding the molecular mechanisms of cell motility during development of the nervous system. Her research focus is on neural crest cells, which are a stem cell-like population unique to vertebrate embryos that form a variety of structures, including the majority of the peripheral nervous system. Along with her interests in neuroscience, Dr. Jacques-Fricke also enjoys teaching physiology, developmental biology, and introductory biology courses.
Dr. Jacques-Fricke designs her courses with the central idea that student interaction and participation are crucial for building both understanding and excitement about science. Students in her courses are frequently involved in activities that start with learning the foundations of biology and build to applying these principles to describe disease states, propose experiments, and analyze and interpret scientific data. In lab, students often propose and test their own hypotheses, and Dr. Jacques-Fricke often brings her research interests into lab courses where students perform original research on neural crest cells.
