In my (Dan's) position at HSU, I work with mentoring two levels of student research outside of the classroom:

1) Graduate-level Master's thesis research

Humboldt State University's College of Natural Resources and Sciences awards the Master of Science in Natural Resources with a Wildlife option. Our department has a long history of mentoring successful graduate student research, and helping prepare students to achieve serious professional goals, including permanent agency positions, admission to PhD programs, and work with well-regarded wildlife NGOs. Our lab has continued in this tradition, with all five of our past MS students now engaged either in permanent positions in wildlife agencies, or in advanced research in wildlife biology (see people page).

I'm proud to be the principal investigator for a lab that continues in this tradition, and one of the most important and simplest expectations I have is that every member of our lab group aspires to continue that same tradition. However, wildlife biology is also traditionally a field dominated by people of one gender and one color, and I think it is critically important to break this tradition and help create a culture of educated wildlife professionals that is more representative of our society in general. In addition, I expect that everyone that wants to do an MS in wildlife in a lab called the "Quantitative Population Ecology" lab should either:

a) have a strong background in natural history of some taxonomic group and want to develop their quantitative skills and improve their understanding of demography

OR

b) have a strong quantitative background (i.e. calculus and statistics) and want to apply these skills to conservation of a natural system while improving their understanding of natural history

If you already have a strong quantitative background and strong natural history background, whoa! Where'd you go to undergrad? If you want to know what kinds of research projects the people in our lab do, browse around at the rest of this website. If I have specific funded opportunities that I'm advertising, I'll put them here, too. If you're reading this and planning on writing me an email, please include the word albatross somewhere in your correspondence - and that's what we call an Easter egg. If you're in such a position that you currently have funding that you want to bring with you, that's great, although my lab still might not be the best place for you.

The university also has basic requirements for admission to this program. They are, generally speaking, a 3.0 GPA and minimum of scores of 150 verbal and 150 quantitative on the GRE. While I detest grades and standardized tests such as the GRE are widely acknowledged to be racist and sexist, these things continue to exist despite my derision (fancy that), and they are requirements of the program, not my lab.

The finances of pursuing a graduate degree in wildlife biology aren't always all that favorable. There isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - just more public service. For this reason, I tend to discourage students from fully self-funding their education. All of my students, up to this point, have had some kind of partial support (at least summer salary and research expenses covered). The department and university provide limited support via part-time employment in assisting teaching, and the California State University Grant can go a long way towards supporting students that are in-state residents (FAFSA required!)

The application deadlines for the formal application process are available via the university's website - if you're interested in pursuing a graduate degree in our lab, you should go ahead and email me.

2) Undergraduate honors thesis research

Honors theses are generally just that - partly an honor, but also part thesis (i.e. work) - earned through academic distinction and hard work. If you're reading this, it means you are already an undergraduate student at HSU. If you're interested in developing a challenging independent study - particularly, on ecology and conservation of birds or small-mammal plant interactions - I'm all ears and come find me during my office hours - far in advance of the semester where you're planning on doing an Honors thesis. More and more, I'd like these studies to be focused on what our lab already does, rather than new projects outside of what our lab does.