Thanks for your interest in the lab! Right now I am looking for a Ph.D. student interested in forest degradation, land-use, agroforestry, and conservation to join the EFA lab. We would be excited to have another member of the team expand ongoing research in Maryland and Central America. A background in landscape ecology, remote sensing, and/or conservation science would be ideal; experience in coding and/or statistics is a plus. Interested students should keep reading.
General information
I welcome Masters and Ph.D. student applications from individuals interested in graduate research with the EFA lab in the Geography and Environmental Systems department at UMBC. UMBC is a dynamic research university with an active graduate school and a wealth of computing resources. The GES department is a community of geographers and ecologists that focus on challenging problems around applied ecology, sustainability, and environmental justice. And the EFA lab is a small group of undergraduate and graduate students brought together by our interest in conservation, restoration and ecology, with strong links to collaborating labs both at UMBC and at other universities.
Interested students should email Dr. Fagan their CV and a brief statement about their research interests and experience. Below, I have tried to hit the most common questions that get asked of me in interviews:
About the Program
The Department of Geography and Environmental Systems welcomes applicants from across the natural and social sciences. The Department offers graduate programs leading to M.S and/or Ph.D degrees. We strongly encourage applications from women, underrepresented ethnic groups, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. Interested applicants are encouraged to visit our website at https://www.ges.umbc.edu to learn more about our department faculty and their diverse research interests. Our application deadline for Fall 2020 graduate admissions is February 1, 2020. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact potential mentors prior to applying. Applications can be completed online through the UMBC Graduate School’s web page: https://www.umbc.edu/gradschool/admissions/apply.html
Funding
In general, Ph.D. students in the department are supported by four years of guaranteed graduate teaching assistantship funding and a potential fifth year fellowship. These assistantships provide a tuition waiver, health care coverage, and stipend. Masters students are responsible for their own funding unless they are responding to a specific advertisement for funded Masters work. While UMBC is reasonably priced, I also encourage each of my students to apply for fellowships from NASA and NSF to fund their work, as this is an important exercise for articulating research goals and financial independence during graduate school is nothing to sneeze at.
Requirements
To apply to the GES Ph.D. program, you generally need a Masters degree. Mid-year starts are certainly possible, for either Masters or Ph.D. students. Masters students are encouraged to go the thesis track, although I certainly have advised extraordinary non-thesis Masters students. To apply to the program, you will need to take the GRE (and the TOEFL, if English is your second language) and secure references and transcripts. Check out the graduate student information on the main GES site. I cannot advise you on minimal GRE scores; that is a question better directed to the GES graduate coordinator.
If you are planning to apply to the EFA lab, you should speak with me (Dr. Fagan) first. In general, I look for students with experience doing independent research and problem-solving, experience in landscape ecology, raster analysis, GIS, and/or computer coding. Students without that relevant experience, but with strong backgrounds in related disciplines like ecology or environmental engineering, will be considered as well.
Projects
Students are encouraged to develop their own thesis projects, and I advise them regularly to help them with this process. While it is possible for me to advise students outside my own areas of expertise, in general I encourage students to stay within the general topic areas we are both excited about. Similarly, if a student wishes to work on relevant topics in a geographic region outside my experience (and secures the funding to do so), I am happy to advise them, although I might insist the external committee member is a regional expert.
If you want to know more about current lines of research, the Research section on this website and the GES website are helpful. However they are not as informative on future directions, as I update them twice a year. If you want a better sense about future research in the lab, please see my published works and send me an email to discuss potential areas of overlap in our research interests.
Resources
In terms of resources, the lab has a nice computing set up, with several standard and high-end PCs for prototyping analyses, a shared cloud space with unlimited storage, and one (soon to be two) workstations with large RAIDs for medium sized analyses. For truly big analyses, we use Google Earth Engine (GEE) and/or the UMBC supercomputer clusters. We also have a decent audio set up for bioacoustic analysis, with several remote microphones and relevant software, and standard forest ecology field equipment. Graduate students have travel monies for going to scientific meetings, as well.
Getting to know us
This is a relatively young lab, and so far we have graduated one exceptional Masters student and an awesome postdoc. If our interview goes well, both of them have offered to talk with prospective students (although the Masters student answers email faster :)). I also encourage promising prospective students to speak with other faculty in GES and to come for a campus interview.
Okay, that's all I can think of for now. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Matt Fagan
General information
I welcome Masters and Ph.D. student applications from individuals interested in graduate research with the EFA lab in the Geography and Environmental Systems department at UMBC. UMBC is a dynamic research university with an active graduate school and a wealth of computing resources. The GES department is a community of geographers and ecologists that focus on challenging problems around applied ecology, sustainability, and environmental justice. And the EFA lab is a small group of undergraduate and graduate students brought together by our interest in conservation, restoration and ecology, with strong links to collaborating labs both at UMBC and at other universities.
Interested students should email Dr. Fagan their CV and a brief statement about their research interests and experience. Below, I have tried to hit the most common questions that get asked of me in interviews:
About the Program
The Department of Geography and Environmental Systems welcomes applicants from across the natural and social sciences. The Department offers graduate programs leading to M.S and/or Ph.D degrees. We strongly encourage applications from women, underrepresented ethnic groups, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. Interested applicants are encouraged to visit our website at https://www.ges.umbc.edu to learn more about our department faculty and their diverse research interests. Our application deadline for Fall 2020 graduate admissions is February 1, 2020. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact potential mentors prior to applying. Applications can be completed online through the UMBC Graduate School’s web page: https://www.umbc.edu/gradschool/admissions/apply.html
Funding
In general, Ph.D. students in the department are supported by four years of guaranteed graduate teaching assistantship funding and a potential fifth year fellowship. These assistantships provide a tuition waiver, health care coverage, and stipend. Masters students are responsible for their own funding unless they are responding to a specific advertisement for funded Masters work. While UMBC is reasonably priced, I also encourage each of my students to apply for fellowships from NASA and NSF to fund their work, as this is an important exercise for articulating research goals and financial independence during graduate school is nothing to sneeze at.
Requirements
To apply to the GES Ph.D. program, you generally need a Masters degree. Mid-year starts are certainly possible, for either Masters or Ph.D. students. Masters students are encouraged to go the thesis track, although I certainly have advised extraordinary non-thesis Masters students. To apply to the program, you will need to take the GRE (and the TOEFL, if English is your second language) and secure references and transcripts. Check out the graduate student information on the main GES site. I cannot advise you on minimal GRE scores; that is a question better directed to the GES graduate coordinator.
If you are planning to apply to the EFA lab, you should speak with me (Dr. Fagan) first. In general, I look for students with experience doing independent research and problem-solving, experience in landscape ecology, raster analysis, GIS, and/or computer coding. Students without that relevant experience, but with strong backgrounds in related disciplines like ecology or environmental engineering, will be considered as well.
Projects
Students are encouraged to develop their own thesis projects, and I advise them regularly to help them with this process. While it is possible for me to advise students outside my own areas of expertise, in general I encourage students to stay within the general topic areas we are both excited about. Similarly, if a student wishes to work on relevant topics in a geographic region outside my experience (and secures the funding to do so), I am happy to advise them, although I might insist the external committee member is a regional expert.
If you want to know more about current lines of research, the Research section on this website and the GES website are helpful. However they are not as informative on future directions, as I update them twice a year. If you want a better sense about future research in the lab, please see my published works and send me an email to discuss potential areas of overlap in our research interests.
Resources
In terms of resources, the lab has a nice computing set up, with several standard and high-end PCs for prototyping analyses, a shared cloud space with unlimited storage, and one (soon to be two) workstations with large RAIDs for medium sized analyses. For truly big analyses, we use Google Earth Engine (GEE) and/or the UMBC supercomputer clusters. We also have a decent audio set up for bioacoustic analysis, with several remote microphones and relevant software, and standard forest ecology field equipment. Graduate students have travel monies for going to scientific meetings, as well.
Getting to know us
This is a relatively young lab, and so far we have graduated one exceptional Masters student and an awesome postdoc. If our interview goes well, both of them have offered to talk with prospective students (although the Masters student answers email faster :)). I also encourage promising prospective students to speak with other faculty in GES and to come for a campus interview.
Okay, that's all I can think of for now. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Matt Fagan
Department of Geography & Environmental Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
211 Sondheim Hall
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
mfagan(at)umbc.edu
http://ges.umbc.edu/fagan/
See my full CV on the People page for more details
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
211 Sondheim Hall
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
mfagan(at)umbc.edu
http://ges.umbc.edu/fagan/
See my full CV on the People page for more details
