Morris Doctoral Fellowship- Applied Quantitative Ecology using Bioacoustics
A five-year Doctoral Fellowship is available at Southern Illinois University starting Fall 2024 to support new doctoral students of the highest quality. The Graduate School provides a 12-month 50% research fellowship award for the first three years, with an annual $1,000 ($500 fall/spring) book/travel allowance for the first three years while on fellowship. The academic program provides a 12-month 50% research or teaching assistantship for the years four and five. This is a competitive fellowship and financial support is not guaranteed to all applicants, only the selected individual. The position is open to students currently holding a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, though preference is for those not previously enrolled in a graduate program (direct post-baccalaureate entry).
The successful applicant will be in the PEASE Lab (Population Estimation and Spatial Ecology; peaselab.com) at Southern Illinois University where the student will work on developing false-positive hierarchical community models to be applied to avian ecology and conservation in forested environments. The student will have access to data from 100s of Autonomous Recording Unit (ARU) throughout Midwestern United States, and will be encouraged to develop research ideas supporting at-risk species recovery. Students with an interest in bioacoustics and machine learning are particularly encouraged to apply.
Eligibility Criteria include:
1. Must have an overall undergraduate grade-point average of at least 3.25, or a grade point average for the last two years in the bachelor’s degree of 3.5 (A= 4.0); and
2. If prior graduate study has been undertaken, must have an overall graduate grade point average of at least 3.7 (A = 4.0); and
3. Must have a score in the 75th percentile or higher on a standard test such as the GRE, MAT, or GMAT; and
4. May not already be enrolled in a doctoral program and may have no previous enrollment at SIUC.
In the competition for Morris Doctoral Fellowships, the nominees must be U.S. citizens, or permanent residents of the USA. In addition, preference will be given to those who have not previously enrolled in a graduate program (direct post-baccalaureate entry).
Students already enrolled at or having previous enrollment at SIU are not eligible for the Morris Doctoral Fellowship.
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Applications are due by Jan 12, 2024, 4pm CST. Fellowship offers are announced by Feb 2, with acceptance decision by April 15.
To apply, students should first email their Curriculum Vitae and a general research interest statement to Dr. Brent Pease (bpease1@siu.edu); the email subject should be “Morris Fellowship Application”. Following review, students may be encouraged to continue with the full Fellowship application through Southern Illinois University’s Graduate School. For full consideration, material from interested applicants must be received by Dec 15,2023 to ensure full fellowship application submission by Jan 12, 2024.
Interested applicants should read the full guidelines of the fellowship here: https://gradschool.siu.edu/_common/documents/cost-and-financial-assistance/2024-morris-fellowship-guidelines.pdf
The application packet can be found here: https://gradschool.siu.edu/_common/documents/cost-and-financial-assistance/2024-morris-fellowship-pkt.pdf