The slime mold didn’t care that it was being watched. In the soft glow of the microbiology lab at EICC’s Scott campus, students in white coats leaned over a row of Petri dishes, whispering predictions the way fans might around a racetrack.
Someone pointed and said, “Look, it’s doing it again.” A vivid yellow webbing pushed itself across a salt barrier it had avoided only days earlier. Now, it was surging toward an oat flake waiting on the other side.
A single-celled organism, brainless and blind, was making a decision.
And in that moment, crowded around a $3 petri dish lined with nutrient-rich agar — a gelatin-like substance used to grow microorganisms — students watched something astonishing unfold. A living system was solving a problem in real time. A behavior. A preference. A choice.
It was the kind of scene no one, least of all the instructors who built the study, expected to become the heart of a project much larger than they imagined.
For years, Psychology Instructor Gary Buckley and Political Science Instructor Eric Carr had been wrestling with the same question. Were they truly teaching their disciplines as sciences, or had their courses fallen into polished but passive routines of lecture, textbook, and exam.
“We were a bit disappointed,” Buckley said. “We felt like we weren’t achieving what we wanted to for our students. That we weren’t focusing on the science of our discipline.”
They talked. Then read. Then listened to hours of research podcasts. They devoured studies on cognition, systems theory, bioelectricity, planaria, collective behavior, and, eventually, an unconventional organism named Physarum polycephalum — a bright yellow slime mold known for its uncanny ability to solve complex problems without a brain.
And one day, they decided they had learned enough. It was time to act.
“We wanted to do this slime mold study no matter what,” Carr said. “We would’ve self-funded it. It was going to happen whether anyone liked it or not.”
Within days, the campus began saying yes. A study that could’ve stalled on logistics instead caught fire. Leadership backed the study. The biology department offered lab access. Scott Community Colleges’ (SCC) library staff rushed to source time-lapse cameras. The SCC Foundation funded supplies. Faculty began asking where their programs might intersect.
“It was like a rainstorm of people who saw the vision,” Buckley said.
Students who weren’t in their classes wanted to join. Among them was psychology student Joeanna Moore, whose curiosity quickly made her a lead consultant.
“You can’t take one of Gary Buckley’s classes without hearing about slime mold,” Moore said, laughing. “But seeing it in the lab? Watching how it behaves? That changed everything for me.”
The project launched as a one-credit Honors Study attached to Buckley and Carr’s existing courses. The timeline was eight weeks. The curriculum was written from scratch. Expectations were flexible and, at times, improvised.
They met in the microbiology lab, where most of the students had never set foot before. Some had learning disabilities. Some hadn’t taken a science class in years. All were invited to function as scientists. Attendance soared.
“We had 100 percent attendance, and the students kept tabs on each other if someone missed a day,” Carr said. “Students named the slime molds. They talked about food preferences. They really grew into a close, committed cohort.”
Students brought in drawings, arrows mapping the organism’s choices, annotated timelines, photos, predictions. No one asked them to do any of it.
“It’s shocking to me how well they developed hypotheses,” Buckley said. “They walked away with an operational understanding of the scientific method because they used it.”
On paper, slime mold is unremarkable. A single cell with no nerves and no brain. Yet it learns.
Students discovered that Physarum avoids salt, so they created salt barriers. At first, the organism retreated. But hunger and adaptation changed the equation. Gradually, the slime mold began to glide over the salt, seeking the food source beyond it. That was interesting. What happened next was astonishing.
Students cut the slime mold into pieces. They found two “experienced” pieces that had already crossed a salt irritant, and one piece that never had. They placed the inexperienced piece between the experienced ones.
Soon, all three crossed the barrier. Somehow the organisms had shared their knowledge.
Theories filled notebooks. Memory. Conditioning. Agency. Cooperation. Students built toothpick bridges to see whether the organisms preferred a less irritating path. They switched lights, changed temperature, added variables, and recorded every shift.
Moore saw parallels to the theories covered in her previous psychology courses.
“You watch what the slime mold does under different variables, and suddenly the theories come alive. Game theory, self-interest, adaptation. It becomes practical, not abstract.”
Meanwhile, at the Blong Technology Center, Digital Modeling Instructor Brad McConnell received an email from Buckley.
Could his students design 3D mazes for the slime mold study?
McConnell said yes.
He handed the project to one of his most advanced students, Sam Leineke, who worked nights at Liberty Pattern and still came in after hours to model and print prototypes.
“It took three or four design iterations,” McConnell said. “It had to fit inside a five-inch Petri dish, be about an eighth-inch tall, and still be climbable for something with no feet.”
Fourteen mazes were printed on a Stratasys 3D printer and delivered to the microbiology lab. The slime mold explored them in ways that were sometimes methodical and sometimes unpredictable.
And, somewhere between salt barriers and printed mazes, a deeper question emerged: What does it mean for a brainless organism to behave as though it remembers, prefers, or decides.
Students compared its patterns to human ones, including stress, avoidance, perseverance, and persuasion. They joked about “depressed” or “stressed” slime mold that refused to move until a more adaptable neighbor fused with it.
For Carr, the political science implications were unmistakable. “In-group/out-group behavior, resource allocation, cooperation — slime mold does all of it. It forces you to rethink what intelligence means.”
Students who once saw themselves as “not science people” became investigators with real data, real findings, and real confidence.
“Students who would’ve never stepped foot in a lab earned Honors credit,” Buckley said. “And truly, that fulfills our college’s mission.”
“What amazed me most,” Moore said, “was how excited everyone got. The spirit was contagious.”
Buckley and Carr have no plans to slow down. More classes will take up the study. More interdisciplinary collaborations are forming. Planaria, known for their regenerative abilities, are next.
“We’re going to keep pushing,” Buckley said. “I think we can program cells. I really do.”
This study is not famous. There are no million-dollar grants attached. Yet it achieved something important. It turned the Scott campus into a place where science is lived, not memorized. Where disciplines cross freely. Where students learn to trust their curiosity.
As Buckley recalls, one student leaned over a dish during the first week and whispered, “I can’t believe I’m actually doing science.” She was not alone. Over the course of the study, students watched slime mold stretch, adapt, retreat, and advance. In those slow movements, they recognized something familiar.
Curiosity. Persistence. The ability to try again.
For many, that recognition changed what they believed they were capable of. And in that way, this small, bright organism did exactly what science should do. It opened a door. It invited questions. It gave students a place to begin.
A reminder that the smallest beginnings can become something so much more.
See the slime mold in action