Master of Science Program
Training in EEB is fundamentally interdisciplinary, incorporating a wide range of the life sciences as well as physical/environmental sciences. The program at the University at Buffalo is designed to incorporate expertise that is distributed across multiple departments into a single graduate program. The program promotes graduate training that takes full advantage of the breadth of the University’s expertise in a manner that cannot be attained within any single discipline.
Advisory Committee. During the first semester in residence in the Program the student and advisor will form an advisory committee for the purpose of selecting courses, conducting the qualifying exam and overseeing and ultimately approving the student’s Masters’ research. The Committee must contain a minimum of three UB faculty, two of whom are EEB members. The composition of the committee must be approved by the Graduate Affairs Committee (GAC), and changes in committee membership require GAC approval. Each semester the Advisory Committee evaluates the student’s progress toward his/her degree and reports that progress to the GAC. In cases in which the student is not making satisfactory progress, the advisory committee, by majority vote, can recommend to the GAC that the student be placed on probation. Students on probation will have two semesters to correct the deficiencies identified by the GAC. If they do not do so, they face dismissal.
Coursework. Students are required to complete 30 credit hours, 18 of which are formal courses. Two of these formal courses must be the Colloquium in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology. Click here for descriptions of courses commonly taken by EEB students. Students are not limited to the courses on the list but are expected to design a program, along with their adviser, that best fits their particular needs and interests.
Students are also required to take a minimum of three courses from the following:
APY 546 Physical Anthropology Topics
APY 547 Ethology Practicum
BIO 500 Bioinformatics
BIO 507 Advanced Ecology
BIO 556 Evolutionary Genetics
BIO 558 Molecular Ecology
GEO 506 Geographical Information Systems
GEO 515 Conservation Biogeography
GLY 500 Comparative Paleobiology
GLY 558 Macroevolution
The purpose of the requirement is to promote interdisciplinary training and the three courses must be distributed across more than one department. Students are also expected to acquire appropriate quantitative skills through courses in areas such as statistics, morphologic and phylogenetic analysis. Students may petition the GAC for credit for graduate courses taken at other institutions.
All students are required to attend the Program’s seminar series and as well as relevant departmental seminars across the disciplines represented within the Graduate Group.
The project. Every student is required to complete a research project, prepare a project report and present the results of the project. Before starting the research and no later than the end of the second semester the student should submit a formal project proposal to the advisory committee. This written proposal should begin with an abstract of no more than 300 words and should describe the anticipated research in no more than 7 pages including figures and references. In it the student will present the problem and discuss the plan, objective, approach, and scope of the proposed project. In considering the proposal, the faculty will also consider whether the student is adequately prepared for the proposed research. Revisions may be requested at this time. The proposal must be approved by the student’s advisor and a majority of the Advisory Committee. The proposal assures that both the student and the advisory committee know and agree upon the nature and scope of the research project.
Once the project proposal has been approved the student may proceed with his/her research. The Advisory Committee will monitor progress through a meeting each semester in which the student summarizes the status of the project. As the project nears completion the student will prepare a written project report in a style chosen by the Advisory Committee. Once a draft of the project report has been approved by the Advisor, the student provides each of the remaining Advisory Committee members with a copy of the report. The Committee members may accept the report as submitted or request revisions, and once the Committee members and Advisor approve any required revisions, the oral defense may be scheduled.
Defense. The Master’s Project must be presented orally before the Advisory Committee at an announced defense that is open to the University community. The date, time, and place of the defense are arranged between the student and the Advisory Committee. To ensure the student has time to make any revisions requested as a result of the defense, the defense must be held one month prior to Graduate School’s deadline for submitting materials.
The defense is chaired by a member of the thesis committee other than the major advisor. It consists of a presentation by the candidate, which should include a statement of the problem, methods used, results obtained, and conclusions reached. The presentation should be given as though it were a formal paper being presented at a scientific meeting. Upon completion of the summary, attendees outside of the committee will be given an opportunity to ask questions. The members of the committee will then question the student. Immediately, after the committee has completed its questions, the committee along with any interested faculty will meet in private to discuss the outcome of the defense. The Advisory Committee will determine, if the oral defense was passed successfully and whether any revisions to the project report are required. Members of the Advisory Committee will approve the final revisions of the project report or at their discretion delegate that responsibility to the Advisor. In the event of failure, the student will be permitted a second oral exam which is to be scheduled in consultation with his committee.