he relationship between a Master of Science or doctoral student and the faculty advisor is a crucial element of a research-based degree program. While some graduate programs admit students and then assign an advisor, other programs, like our Environment and Natural Resources Graduate Program, require that prospective students make a connection with a faculty advisor prior to admission. This has the advantage of making sure that there is space available in an appropriate faculty advisor’s research program before the prospective student submits an application, but it does add an additional layer of preliminary work that prospective students must do to secure entry to the program. The guidance below will help you identify whether our program has a potential faculty mentor whose work aligns with your interests and whether that person is recruiting students for the upcoming year.
You should start your investigation by exploring our general research areas to see which research area(s) align best with your personal research interests and career goals. Within each research area, you will see a list of active graduate advisors whose research connects with that research area; some faculty members are listed within multiple research areas. You can click on each faculty member’s name to see their faculty profile, including their research interests, current research projects, classes they teach, a link to their CV, and their contact information. We encourage you to explore each faculty member’s profile to see which faculty member’s research interests and current projects interest you the most.
Once you’ve found a faculty member whose work aligns with your interests, please feel encouraged to reach out to them by email, introduce yourself, ask about their research, and see if they are interested in taking on a graduate student. You can propose an online or in-person meeting to get to know each other better. You are welcome to reach out to multiple faculty members if multiple faculty members’ work is of interest to you: our students will compose a committee of multiple faculty members other than their primary advisor, so making contact with multiple people at this stage can be helpful in composing your committee later on.
If the conversation goes well, you should ask the faculty member whether they endorse you submitting an application to work with them. If they do, then we will be glad to receive your application.