HDRU News
Today is:
Ph.D. Assistantship: Human Dimensions of Fisheries -- Fall 2009
Inquiries are encouraged from highly-qualified applicants regarding a Ph.D. assistantship opportunity in the Human Dimensions Research Unit, Department and Graduate Field of Natural Resources, Cornell University.
The successful candidate will have excellent writing, oral communication, and analytical skills and will be highly self-motivated to achieve in an exciting, rigorous, collaborative, and intellectually-stimulating academic setting. A Master’s degree in a relevant field is required, along with outstanding references. Completed Bachelor’s and Master’s programs of study will have ideally included work in both the social and ecological sciences. Previous research experience in fisheries is not required, but is desirable.
The potential focus for the dissertation research is flexible, and will be developed in partnership with the graduate committee chair (Prof. Barbara Knuth), but will generally focus on the human dimensions of fisheries with a Great Lakes or Northeast US regional focus, and may address questions related to risk perception, management, and communication (e.g., fisheries-related pathogens and disease, fisheries-related chemical contaminants).
Assistantship includes tuition, stipend, and health coverage and is renewable for several years provided strong progress is made in the graduate program.
Information about the general graduate program can be found at: http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/teaching/grad/.
Information about the Human Dimensions Research Unit can be found at: http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/hdru/.
Information about the Cornell Graduate School application process can be found at: http://www.gradschool.cornell.edu/.
Direct inquiries about this opportunity, including CV and statement of interest, to: Barbara Knuth, bak3@cornell.edu
Graduate Research Assistantship Opening: Spring or Fall 2009
The Project:
This integrated project addresses socio-ecological resilience in the Hudson River Watershed (HRW) by studying partnerships between citizen groups that address community/economic vitality and those emphasizing ecological quality. Watersheds bring together the well-being of ecosystems and the people living in them; management works when diverse interests come together.
In complex ecosystems work, relatively little is known about citizen group capacity to partner across issues and places, nor the outcomes of such partnerships in ecosystem management. Our work will improve watershed protection/management across agricultural, rural and urban systems. Watersheds cannot be effectively protected if their human communities are languishing and uninvolved in management. We emphasize community-based decision making, including intra and inter-municipal public-private partnerships. The Hudson River Estuary Action Agenda emphasizes integrative landscape-level approaches such as ours, and the high profile of coupled system research and of the HRW suggests a good chance of augmenting the funding.
We will examine citizen group partnerships across sites and issues, and identify outcomes of these partnerships and key barriers to building and using them. Partnerships succeed when mutual goals are recognized; in complex systems such as the HRW, there may be little partnering across diverse issues (i.e., links between community and ecological vitality) or between nodes in the system (i.e., links between rural/urban locations).
The Applicant
Successful applicants should have a strong background and interest in social science research and natural resources. Excellent communication and writing skills are critical to this assistantship as are interests in qualitative and quantitative research methods. Students who have the ability and interest to integrate the ecological characteristics of the landscape with larger political and social phenomena will be highly competitive. An interest in interdisciplinary research is fundamental and students from backgrounds such as political science, planning, sociology, rural sociology, environmental science, natural resources, forestry, and other related fields are encouraged to apply. Minimum requirements for admission are GRE scores of 600 on each section, an undergraduate GPA of 3.5 or higher, and a strong personal statement and letters of reference.
Assistantship Details
Start dates for the assistantship are Fall semester 2008 (August) or Spring semester 2009 (January). Applications will be reviewed continuously until a suitable candidate is identified. The competitive package in includes tuition, health insurance, and a monthly stipend. Currently, 4 semesters of support are committed to this project. I will work with PhD students to secure additional funding.
For More Information
Please contact me at the e-mail or phone number below. If you are interested in applying, the first step is to contact us and also to share some basic information about your interests and background. The documents that we would like to see are:
Richard Stedman
Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University
rcs6@cornell.edu
607-255-9729
