University of Connecticut
AC-4: Graduate Program

At this time the Department has over 75 graduate students. Graduate students have opportunities to work closely with faculty in three general areas: Food Marketing and Industrial Organization, Environmental and Resource Economics, and International Agricultural Development. The Department takes particular pride in its research program and recognizes that research permits graduate students to demonstrate their creative ability and to attain academic maturity. Students usually begin thinking about their thesis or dissertation project early in their program, with formal planning beginning during the second semester of an M.S. program and at the end of the second semester of a Ph.D. program. Examples of possible research topics are: econometric analysis of food demand and supply, measurement of economic efficiency in agricultural enterprises, market power and industrial concentration, interregional competition, analysis of entry barriers in the food manufacturing industries, evaluating alternative promotion strategies for a commodity marketing board, analysis of public policies to protect open space, efficient design of policies for environmental protection, evaluating the impact of alternative groundwater contamination regulations upon agricultural activity and public welfare, and identifying the determinants of rural-urban migration patterns in less developed countries.

Research in the department covers a wide range of fields, including behavioral ecology of vertebrates and invertebrates, systematics and evolution of plants and animals, population and community ecology, functional morphology and development, and conservation biology. Faculty members and graduate students work on nearly all of the major groups of organisms, including algae, mosses and lichens, aquatic plants, desert plants, tropical and temperate forest trees, the parasites of sharks and rays, insects, spiders, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Current research projects span the globe, with investigators working throughout North America, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil, Borneo, Madagascar, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and many other countries. Our strong research program has given national recognition to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut . Federal grant support for research in systematic biology over the past decade places the University of Connecticut among the top 10 in the country. Many of our faculty members serve or have served as officers of major scientific societies, including several presidents of national or international scientific societies, as National Science Foundation panel directors or members, and as editors of over two dozen science journals. Recent graduate students have won prizes for best papers at national meetings in fields such as botany, ecology, entomology, evolution, herpetology, ichthyology, marine biology, parasitology, and plant systematics.

The Environmental Engineering Program's mission is to provide a state of the art and multidisciplinary learning environment supported by cutting-edge research in three core areas (tracks): (i) Biogeochemical processes (BGC);(ii) Air pollution and atmospheric processes (ATM);and (iii) Bydrogeosciences and engineering (HGS). These three tracks reflect the scope and interdisciplinary nature of Environmental Engineering. Peavy et al. (Environmental Engineering, 1985) provide the following definition: “that branch of engineering that is concerned with protecting the environment from the potentially deleterious effects of human activity, protecting human populations from the effects of adverse environmental factors and improving the environmental quality for human health and well-being“. The faculty is committed to your academic and professional success. We offer challenging and rigorous courses; exciting and relevant research opportunities; and individualized mentoring and guidance.

For this submission, we selected our three most interdisciplinary programs where graduate students predominantly work on issues related to sustainability, ecosystem maintenance, food systems, and social responsibility.