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Forest and Wildlife Ecology - Graduate Student Awards - Best Disssertation Awards

The Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology annual “Best Dissertation Awards”. One award will be given in Wildlife Ecology, and one in Forestry, and include $500.

• Intellectual merit will be assessed based on dissertation papers published, and the scientific contribution of the dissertation
• Broader impacts include the relevance of the work for resource management, unique outreach efforts, citizen scientists involvement, and undergraduate mentoring in the research.

PhD Advisors in the programs can nominate their students. The application deadline is typically in the Spring of each year. Students must have been enrolled in either the PhD program in Wildlife Ecology, or the PhD Program in Forestry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. All graduate students in the two programs who defended their PhD dissertation successfully within 24 months prior to the deadline are eligible.

Required elements of the application are:

• a 2-page (max) nomination letter by the advisor
• a 2-page (max) dissertation summary by the student that should explicitly state the intellectual merit and the broader impacts
• the CV of the student in which the status of each journal article at the time of the defense is indicated (i.e., whether the article was published, in review, or in preparation)
• unofficial graduate transcripts of the student
• abstracts of submitted or published dissertation papers (if available)

All application elements need to be compiled into a single PDF file, and sent to FWE Grad Awards Committee Chair by the application deadline.