UAF Biology & Wildlife graduate students have extraordinary opportunities to conduct independent biological research in state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and field settings in arctic, alpine, and boreal ecosystems near campus or at remote locations.

The Department of Biology and Wildlife has approximately 130 graduate students. The atmosphere is informal and students and faculty share small-enrollment classes, field trips, and community and social activities.

Program strengths include ecology, animal physiology, wildlife biology, systematics, and evolutionary biology. Search through the titles of recent theses and dissertations and see the body of work that has been done by past graduate students.

Research facilities available to graduate students on the Fairbanks campus are primarily provided by the Institute of Arctic Biology and include a state-of-the-art DNA sequencing facility, a new building for small animal care and use, the Robert G. White Large Animal Research Station, the Spatial Ecology Lab, electron and light microscopy laboratories, the Alaska Geobotany Center,, and the IAB Greenhouse Facility. Field research opportunities arise throughout Alaska but also can be found at the NSF taiga Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, located about 20 miles from campus or the NSF tundra LTER site at Toolik Lake, located on Alaska's north slope 254 km north of the Arctic Circle. The University of Alaska Museum of the North houses animal and plant collections where faculty and graduate students combine molecular genetic analyses with more traditional methods of systematics and comparative biology. Graduate students interested in wildlife biology and fisheries are often funded through the Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.

Financial support is available on a competitive basis through Graduate Fellowships, Research Assistantships, and Teaching Assistantships. Most of our graduate students are supported with Research Assistantships which are funded by grants to individual faculty members from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and other state and federal agencies. Teaching experience is available through Teaching Assistantships, and advanced Ph.D. students may be invited to instruct an undergraduate course.

Advice on admissions and financial support is available in a Letter from the Department Chair.