PiE Admission Requirements

Graduate Affairs Policy

Preamble

The Program in Ecology is an interdisciplinary graduate program leading to the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Ecology. Students and faculty from multiple departments and colleges at the University of Wyoming participate in the Program.

Graduate students admitted to the Program will have a home department, which will typically be the home department of the respective committee chair or co-chair. Funding in the form of graduate assistantships and tuition waivers will often come from state-funded Graduate Assistantships and individual faculty grants administered through the home departments. Home departments may impose obligations on students, including attendance at departmental seminars and other functions, but home departments may not impose any curricular obligations on students beyond the Program in Ecology curriculum. Students pursuing degrees within the Program in Ecology are expected to attend PiE speaker’s series and other PiE functions as they arise.

The Program in Ecology is expected to produce PhDs with broad perspectives in the field of ecology. The Program aspires to educate scientists who are:

capable of integrating concepts and perspectives from across the discipline
familiar with the historical and philosophical roots of the discipline
able to relate concrete ecological phenomena with abstract concepts and theory
capable of solving problems and analyzing data quantitatively and qualitatively
able to conceive, design, and execute ecological research in their area of specialization
able to anticipate emerging issues and questions in ecology, particularly integrating with other fields (including the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities)
able to communicate clearly in oral and written form to technical and general audiences
imbued with a strong sense of professional ethics
committed to advancing ecological knowledge and its application

Admission

Only students seeking a doctoral degree will be admitted into the Program. Minimum criteria for admission to the Program in Ecology are:

minimum score of 900 on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test,
minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0,
agreement by a member of the PiE Faculty to sponsor the student, or to co-sponsor the student together with a PiE Affiliate, and
admission to a home department at the University of Wyoming.

All applications to the Program will be reviewed by the Graduate Affairs Committee, which has authority on admissions. Students applying to the Program who lack a Master’s degree must show exceptional promise and commitment (e.g., through undergraduate or post-graduate research experiences, peer-reviewed publications, and/or success in competing for research fellowships). Such students are encouraged to consult with their prospective advisor on whether to apply directly to PiE or to Master’s programs in individual home departments of PiE faculty.

Students already admitted to doctoral programs in individual departments at the University of Wyoming may apply to transfer to the Program. Transfer is not pro forma. Transfer applications are subject to the same criteria as for entering students, and admission to the Program for transfer students must be approved by the Graduate Affairs Committee.

Transfer from other Programs

Students who wish to transfer into the Program from department-based doctoral programs must submit a formal application to transfer into the Program, and must satisfy all of the admission requirements specified for entering students. Such application will consist of copies of all of the application materials originally submitted to the program in which the student is currently enrolled, as well as a letter of recommendation from their prospective PiE advisor. In addition, they must submit a letter stating their reasons for wanting to transfer to the Program. All applications will be reviewed by the Graduate Affairs Committee. In addition, the following provisos apply for transfer students:

Students enrolled in departmental programs who have not yet taken their preliminary examinations may pursue the PhD in Ecology provided they (a) appoint an Advisory Committee under Program rules before they take their preliminary examinations, and (b) fulfill the curricular requirements.
Students who have been admitted to departmental programs before Fall 2005, and who have already taken their preliminary examinations, may pursue the PhD in Ecology provided they (a) appoint an Advisory Committee under Program rules within one month of admission to the Program, and (b) fulfill the curricular requirements. The student’s Advisory Committee has the option of requiring a new preliminary examination.
Students who have been admitted to departmental programs during or after Fall 2005, and who have already taken their preliminary examinations, may pursue the PhD in Ecology provided they (a) appoint an Advisory Committee under Program rules within one month of admission to the Program, (b) take a new preliminary examination within one semester of admission into the Program, and (c) fulfill the curricular requirements.
In all cases, waivers and/or substitutions of required courses are at the discretion of the Graduate Affairs Committee.

Degree Requirements

Advisory Committee

Before the end of the second semester of study, the student should nominate a five-member Advisory Committee to the Graduate School. At least three members of the committee, including the committee chair (usually the student's advisor), will be members of the PiE Faculty. One other member, who will serve as Graduate School representative, must be from outside the home department of the major advisor, although (s)he can be a faculty member in a department that participates in the Program. The committee will advise the student on his/her program of graduate study, execute and evaluate the student's preliminary examination, evaluate the student's dissertation proposal and dissertation, and conduct the student’s dissertation defense.

Program of Study

All students are required to take ECOL 5100 or equivalent. This course should be taken during the first year of residency. All students are required to take ECOL 5550 no sooner than the fourth and no later than the eighth semester of study. All students should take ECOL 5350 or its equivalent at least once a year, excepting years when they are enrolled in 5100 or 5550. Exceptions or substitutions of these requirements are subject to approval by the Graduate Affairs Committee.

The program of study must include at least six credit hours aimed at developing a tool skill, which except for rare cases shall be in the quantitative/analytical domain (e.g., statistics, modeling, GIS, remote sensing, bioinformatics). Courses relating to research tools should be taken early in the student's residency to ensure that they can be used in thesis research and advanced studies. Specific coursework and tool-skill development for the student's program of study will be developed in consultation with and subject to approval by the student’s Advisory Committee.

Admission to Candidacy

Admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. requires two steps: 1) providing evidence that the student is prepared to identify a research question, design an approach for investigating that question, and a plan for executing the approach, all in the format of an NSF-style research proposal, and 2) illustrating adequate proficiency in the subject matter of ecology through a process involving both written and oral exams.

Proposal

Students must submit a NSF-style proposal to their committee outlining their project, typically by the end of the fourth semester. Each committee member will provide feedback to the student on the proposed research and indicate approval of the proposal or request revision. The proposal must be approved by all committee members prior to starting the preliminary exams.

While this proposal should be a plan for actual dissertation research, unforeseen circumstances may require altering the student’s dissertation work after the proposal has been approved by the committee. In the case of a major alteration, the student should reformulate a research plan and submit it to the committee in writing for committee approval.

Preliminary Exam

Written portion of the preliminary exam.

The student will take the written exam portion of the preliminary exam no fewer than 2 weeks following approval of the research proposal . The goal of this exam is to test breadth of knowledge in ecology as described in the Preamble to this document. The design of this exam will be coordinated by the graduate committee under the leadership of the advisor. Each written exam will cover the following topics:

Ecological topics ranging from organismal / evolutionary to ecosystem-level perspectives, integrating concepts and perspectives from across the discipline, over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.
The philosophical and historical development of ecology.
The conceptual background of the student’s area of specialization.

The exam will consist of 4-6 questions developed collectively by the committee and organized by the student’s major professor. The exam will be open book; however the answers will be solely the work of the student. Answers should be fully cited and collectively should be no longer than 30 pages double spaced exclusive of references cited. Students will have one full week (7 days) to complete the exam. Committee members will indicate pass/fail within one week following completion of written exams. Four of five passing votes are required.

Oral Portion of the Preliminary Exam.

No sooner than 2 weeks after successfully passing the written exam, the student may proceed to an oral exam administered by his/her graduate committee. Oral exams center around three goals from which questions will be derived:

To verify that the student is prepared, conceptually and methodologically, to carry out successful dissertation research.
To evaluate the student’s ability to conceptualize specific questions in a broad, integrative context.
To evaluate the student’s ability to think spontaneously and creatively and to articulate responses about unexpected or novel questions.

The advisory committee will discuss and organize specific questions based on these goals in a short session at the beginning of the exam period before admitting the student to the examination room and starting the exam. Following the exam each committee member will provide non-binding paper votes of pass/fail for each of the three goals of the oral exam. Following discussion of the student’s performance, committee members will each assign a grade of pass/fail for the overall exam. Four of five committee members must vote for passing the overall oral exam.

Students whose performance is unsatisfactory will be given one opportunity for retaking the oral examination. This retake will occur no later than the academic-year semester following the first examination.

Public Seminars

Students are required to give two oral presentations on their research. The purposes of these presentations are to provide the student with practice in oral presentations and to keep the PiE community informed of the student’s progress. The first will describe the student’s dissertation research proposal. This presentation will be given before the student submits his/her thesis proposal. The second presentation will summarize the student’s completed dissertation research, and will normally be given the same semester as the student’s dissertation defense. Under extraordinary circumstances (subject to approval by the Graduate Affairs Committee), this presentation may be given at an earlier time. These presentations must be open to the public, and may comprise part of a departmental or Program in Ecology seminar or brown-bag series.

Approved 3 X 05; Revised 15 XII 05. Revised by a 24 (positive) to 0 (negative) vote, 25 X 07.