Advice To Prospective Students
thoroughly enjoy working with students, and seek to build and maintain an active and happy lab. If you are interested in working with me, please take note of my comments below; this advice will be germane regardless of whether you are applying to work with me via Anthropology or Zoology.
Coursework and preparation: It is utterly essential that you have a strong background in biology. I do not necessarily require a B.S. in biology per se, but I look very favorably upon applicants who have at least a double major (e.g., Anthropology and Biology) or a minor in biology, zoology, ecology, etc. If you do not have the complement of a biology minor/major, then I encourage you to include in your studies as many ecology and evolution courses as possible.
Experience: Having field experience is almost a requirement for students that I accept. While my fieldwork is complemented with lab data, I am a field worker first and foremost. As such, I need to know that any incoming graduate student has determined for his/herself that fieldwork is something that they enjoy. There is only one way to determine this: by going to the field and trying it out for yourself. It is one thing to read about primates and ecology and conservation, but another thing altogether to deal with the exigencies of living in a field setting. My preference is for students to have had experiences in the tropics, most preferably Africa, and also to have had the experience of observing animal behavior in natural settings.
I have a couple of suggestions if you are seeking fieldwork experience. It can be difficult to convince a researcher that you would make a good field assistant unless you already have field experience in the first place. This seems somewhat of a catch-22. The good news is that there are several excellent tropical biology field schools that can provide you with training in the field. I suggest that you surf the www and learn more about, for example:
The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS)
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)
Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation
Ometepe Biological Field Station
La Suerte Biological Field Station
All of these organizations and institutes offer field courses of varying description, focus, and length and can provide you with rigorous training in field methods. Once you have some field methods and experience under your belt you are in an excellent position for competing for coveted tropical field research assistant positions.
For primate-related field opportunities, check out the "Jobs" link on the Primate Information Network, a NIH-funded www-site curated by the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Other considerations: Please make sure that I am actually someone you want to work with! By this, I mean please consider the research I have done and will continue to do. The best way of doing this is to take a look at my publications. Once you have done this, AND you have decided that you are interested in this kind of research, I encourage you to then get in touch with me - email works great. Introduce yourself, and give me a strong sense of what your goals are in contacting me and why you are considering applying to the University of Wisconsin.
Once the application time arrives, please take care in the writing of your graduate statement of intent. I read these very closely. They should not be too broad (e.g., I love Anthropology! I want to study human fossils, primate behavior and forensics) or too narrow (e.g., I only want to work with chimpanzees). A well-written statement spends only a short time explaining past experiences, and instead indicates potential future research areas. Also, once again, it is critical that you indicate why you chose UW and why you chose me as someone you want to work with.
Finally, if you can manage to visit campus sometime just before or after applying, I strongly advise that you do so. It makes a huge difference if the student applicant is a "known quantity". Plus, you will get a good sense of whether the program feels like a good "fit" for you.
Good luck!