Professor Aaron Welsch ’10 is passionate about teaching neuroscience/biology in a way that challenges students to not just memorize facts and concepts, but also analyze how concepts are related and interact with each other. He teaches sections of Introduction to Neuroscience and is the lab instructor for Intro to Neuroscience; Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology; Human Physiology; and Neurochemistry and Disease. He has been teaching at Hope since 2018.

During his graduate training Professor Welsch conducted research over a six-year period on the role of an androgen receptors in brain function, using Cre/IoxP technology and molecular techniques to selectively knock the androgen receptor out of specified tissue types and to analyze the outcomes.

His grad school training and professional activities also have been focused on teaching science effectively. He mentored Michigan State University undergraduate research assistants in the lab in which he was conducting his research, and developed neuroscience-themed activities and projects for 7th and 9th-graders attending a Michigan State University STEM summer camp. That inspired a similar program launched at Hope in 2021 as part of the Explore Hope summer camp series; Hope neuroscience students partner with him to teach teens about the brain, using hands-on activities, in the week-long program for local 8th-to-11th graders. During Brain Awareness Week each spring, in an on-campus open house for families and in visits to local schools, with Hope students he encourages kids to think about how they could see themselves interacting with science and explore the things the brain can control.

AREAS OF Expertise

• Hormones and behavior
• Neuroscience curriculum development

EDUCATION

• M.S., neuroscience, Michigan State University, 2017
• B.S., chemistry, Hope College, 2010

Thesis

• “Timing Is Everything: Hormonal Control of the Developing SNB in Mice,” with C. L.
  Jordan and S. M. Breedlove, Michigan State University master’s thesis, 2017

Outside the College

As a Hope student, Professor Welsch was a varsity swimmer, but today he prefers golf. He
coaches his two young kid's soccer and swimming programs. His wife, Anna ’11, majored at
nursing at Hope College and is a nurse practitioner at a Holland medical practice.