University of Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
Overview
The University of Missouri, St. Louis (UM-St. Louis) is one of four campuses of the University of Missouri System. It was established in 1963 and is the third-largest university in the state. In addition to its role in advancing knowledge as part of a comprehensive research university, UM-St. Louis has a special mission determined by its urban location and its shared land-grant tradition. It works in partnership with other key community institutions to help the St. Louis region progress and prosper.
Enrollment is 15,961 students, of whom 2,637 were graduate students. Sixty-three percent of the graduate students were women, and 11.9 percent were African American.
The Location and Community
The University occupies a suburban campus of more than 300 acres northwest of St. Louis, the major metropolitan area in the state. The campus has easy access to the airport and the downtown area via the MetroLink, which has stops on both the north and south campuses. St. Louis has an abundance of cultural, sports, and entertainment opportunities.
Programs of Study and Degree Requirements
The University of Missouri-St. Louis offers programs of study leading to the Ph.D.: applied mathematics, biology, business administration (information systems), chemistry, criminology and criminal justice, education, nursing, physics, physiological optics, political science, and psychology. The Ed.D. and Ed.S. in education is also administered by the Graduate School. The O.D. in optometry is administered by the School of Optometry.
Master’s degrees are offered in the areas of accounting, biochemistry and biotechnology, biology, business administration, chemistry, communication, computer science, counseling, creative writing, criminology and criminal justice, economics, educational administration, elementary education, English, gerontology, history, management information systems, mathematics, museum studies, music education, nursing, philosophy, physics, physiological optics, political science, psychology, public policy administration, secondary education, social work, sociology, and special education. The University also offers twenty-one graduate certificate programs.
Facilities & Resources
The three libraries at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (Thomas Jefferson, Ward E. Barnes, and Mercantile) hold more than 1 million volumes, 2,700 periodical subscriptions, and 1 million government documents and provide access to approximately 3,000 full-text, online journals. The Mercantile Library, with collection strengths in Western Americana, holds two distinguished transportation collections: the Barringer Collection, which focuses on American railroad history, and the Pott Waterways Collection, which focuses on United States river and inland waterways history. The Center for Molecular Electronics conducts research to understand and control actions at the atomic and molecular levels that are essential for state-of-the-art materials and devices. The International Center for Tropical Ecology promotes research in biodiversity, conservation, and sustainable use of tropical ecosystems. The Center for Neurodynamics conducts research on the effects of stochastic noise on information transfer in natural and artificial neurological systems. The Center for Trauma Recovery conducts research on the assessment and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. The Center for Business and Industrial Studies investigates managerial problems and performs applied research. The Center for International Studies supports academic programs, seminars, and conferences designed to promote and improve research in international studies and the methods of teaching international studies in schools and colleges. The Public Policy Research Center conducts research in the areas of employment, education, housing, and law, and offers training experiences for students in urban research. The Center for Transportation Studies is pioneering a new program in supply chain management, developing funds for research into the role private sector transportation plays in the provision of public transportation services.
Expenses and Aid
Tuition and fees per semester (full-time, 9 credit hours) are $3,800 for residents and $8,600 for nonresidents. Estimated annual expenses for international students are $33,880 for the academic year.
Financial Aid:
Financial assistance is available to graduate students primarily through assistantships. Departments determine the stipend level for teaching and research assistants. Appointments range from $5,000 to $18,000 for master’s students and from $7,500 to $30,000 for doctoral students..
Housing/Living Expenses:
Traditional residence hall or apartment housing is available. Full information is available online at http://www.umsl.edu/html/housing.html.
How to Apply / Application
Doctoral applications have deadlines as early as January 5 and no later than July 15. Master’s degree student applications are generally due July 1 for the fall semester, December 1 for the winter/spring semester, and May 1 for the summer session. Applicants requesting financial aid should submit their applications by March 15. Additional information is available online at the Web address listed in this description.
International Students
In less than forty years, UM-St. Louis has grown from 600 students and about a dozen instructors to a major institution with more than 15,000 students, including more than 700 international students from over 90 countries. Not only is UM-St. Louis affordable, it offers student housing, modern student facilities, and state of the art computer technology to go along with its convenient location, and world-class faculty. UM-St. Louis continues to expand its academic programs, improve its physical facilities and widen its reach. The minimum TOEFL score for graduate admission is 550 (213 computer based).
Who to Contact
University of Missouri-St. Louis
Graduate Admissions
217 Millennium Student Center
One University Boulevard
St. Louis, Missouri 63121-4499
The Graduate Departments and areas of Research
• Biology. Animal behavior, biochemistry, biogeography, community ecology, conservation biology, developmental biology, ecophysiology, evolutionary ecology, evolution of sociality in Hymenoptera, historical biogeography, molecular biology, molecular systematics, microbial genetics, neuroethology of freshwater and marine organisms, plant-animal/insect interactions, plant molecular biology, plant population genetics, population biology and systematics, RNA processing and metabolism, studies in tropical and temperate ecosystems.
• Business. Accounting, accounting regulation, auditor judgment and decision making, taxation, commercial banking, corporate finance, investments and portfolio management, government regulations, telecommunications, client/server, IS sourcing, decision support systems, international information systems, management of information systems, production/operations management, mathematical programming, transportation routing and scheduling, logistic systems, freight consolidation, simulation, supply chain management, human resources, international management, strategic management, marketing strategy, new product development, advertising, consumer behavior.
• Chemistry and Biochemistry. Organometallic chemistry of the platinum metals, metallaborane chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, transition metal-catalyzed reactions of silanes, redox enzymes based on cyclodextrin, serum transferrin chemistry, high-resolution intracavity laser spectroscopy, surface and interfacial chemistry, nonlinear optical effects, computational chemistry, effects of electrical fields on flames, natural products chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry, organic synthesis, physical organic chemistry, structure-function studies of enzymes, biophysical chemistry, structural studies using NMR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction.
• Communication. Theory and methodology, intercultural, interpersonal, mass, and organizational.
• Computer Science. Computer graphics, scientific computation, CAGD, image processing, computer vision, sensor simulation, knowledge-based information retrieval and classification, artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, genetic algorithms and genetic programming, fuzzy reasoning, clustering algorithms, machine learning, Bayesian networks, stochastic optimization, software engineering.
• Criminology and Criminal Justice. Criminological theory, social control, crime prevention, crime and social institutions, delinquency, violence, gangs, gender, race and ethnicity, victimization, offender decision making, policing, courts, corrections, prisoner re-entry, criminal and juvenile justice policy analysis, evaluation research, qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Economics. Applied econometrics; microeconomics; macroeconomics; monetary theory; international trade and comparative systems; urban, state, and local finance; public sector; labor; public policy; law and economics; forensic economics; property rights; industrial organization; telecommunications; health economics; economics of aging; gender; poverty; science and technology.
• Education. Instructional strategies; professional development school initiatives; inclusion; ethics and character education; motivation in learning; evaluation of educational programs; counseling (school, community, and marriage/family); remedial and corrective reading; literacy; action research on teacher development; technology and learning; mathematics education (manipulatives); constructivism; autism; behavioral disorder; performance-based assessment; motor development; postmodern thought and deconstruction; higher, adult, and vocational education; methodology, measurement, and assessment; urban education; school-university partnerships and community collaboration.
• English (M.A.) and Creative Writing (M.F.A.). Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, medieval, early modern, eighteenth-century, Victorian, American, modern British, and Jewish literature; literary theory; feminist theory; composition theory; creative writing in fiction and poetry; linguistics.
• Gerontology. Health-care policy, reform, and financing; social security and other pension policies; caregiving and other informal support of the elderly; mental health assessment and treatment; ethnic differences, particularly in health-care behavior; assessment and treatment of vision problems; cross-cultural comparisons of retirement patterns and policies.
• History. United States social and political history; nineteenth-century; twentieth-century; African-American; women; slavery and emancipation; urban; environmental; military; St. Louis, Missouri; Native American; German-American ethnic; American West; Roman Empire; European-medieval; eighteenth century French, German, Spanish, English; economic; women; Renaissance and Reformation; medieval; African; East Asian—Japan, China, Asian-Pacific Rim; Latin American colonial; nineteenth- and twentieth-century sports; museum studies.
• Mathematics. Wavelets and computational harmonic analysis, splines and approximation theory, subdivision methods for computer graphics, medical imaging, computational mathematics, string theory, algebraic geometry, differential geometry, transformation groups, statistics, stochastic processes.
• Music Education. Psychology of music, application of technology in music education, tests and measurements in music, conducting, choral and instrumental performance, music education curriculum design, affective response to music, music supervision and administration, music software design, urban music education, arts education.
• Nursing. Adherence to health treatment, catastrophic stress, exercise and hypertension, informatics and telemetry in health care, psychosocial nursing interventions, quantitative methods in nursing research, injuries and violence as a health problem, women’s health.
• Philosophy. Ethics (contemporary ethical theory and bioethics), philosophy and history of science (philosophy of medicine and ancient Greek and medieval Arabic traditions), history of philosophy, aesthetics (aesthetic appreciation and environmental aesthetics).
• Physics. Astrophysics, observational astronomy, experimental atomic physics, biophysics, theoretical elementary particle physics, experimental and theoretical solid-state physics, nanoscale microscopy.
• Physiological Optics (vision science). Aging and Alzheimer’s disease, binocular vision in children and adults, contact lenses, control of eye movements, electrophysiology in healthy and diseased visual systems, low vision, mathematical approaches to vision, neurophysiology of visual and oculomotor pathways, public health, theoretical and applied visual optics, theoretical and applied visual psychophysics.
• Political Science. American government and politics; political economy; public administration; urban politics and urban economic development; program evaluation; public law and judicial politics; public opinion and elections; methodology; labor relations; political thought; international law and organization; civil liberties; comparative politics; comparative health policy; environmental politics; interpersonal politics; minority politics; policy implementation; political communication; African, Chinese, Japanese, and Latin American politics; U.S. relations with East Asia; Western and Eastern European politics.
• Psychology-Clinical. Bereavement and complicated loss, assessment and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder, personal and professional relationships, interventions for victims of abuse linked to sexual orientation, psychology of women, treatment of family caregivers and depression in older adults, racial identification, multicultural issues, play, curiosity and children’s development; mental illness and homelessness.
• Psychology-Experimental. Behavioral neuroscience, with emphases on neuroendocrinology and neuropharmacology; cognitive processes.
• Psychology-Industrial/Organizational. Employee recruitment; interviewing; performance appraisal; staffing; compensation and benefits; substance abuse; time management; job satisfaction; work motivation; decision making, conflict, and negotiation; group processes; leadership; psychometrics; statistics; personality measurement; research methodology; social psychology; nonverbal communication.
• Public Policy Administration. Managing human resources and organization, policy research and analysis, local government management, health policy, nonprofit organization management and leadership, metropolitan governance, urban and regional planning, welfare policy, social security policy, organization theory, government contracting for services, performance measurement, program evaluation, conflict resolution, defense conversion, labor economics, public-sector microeconomics.
• Social Work. Urban-related research issues, family violence, social welfare, gerontology, child abuse and neglect, immigration, substance abuse and minorities, community economic development, international social welfare, addiction, disabilities.
• Sociology. Minority groups, stratification, deviance, comparative social organization, health, social psychology, conflict intervention, aging, race and ethnic relations, education, interpersonal violence.
• Women’s and Gender Studies. Women’s studies, women’s roles in society, women’s issues.