Program Requirements

Admission

In addition to general regulations for admission to Masters programs at Central, applicants for admission to the Primate Behavior program must meet the following qualifications:

• Students must hold an undergraduate degree in anthropology, psychology, or biology. Before admission, program faculty will evaluate the academic course work and experience of all applicants for admission and will recommend remedial course work if, in their judgment, there are deficiencies in pre-baccalaureate work which need to be overcome before entrance into the program. Admission to the program and continuation in it may be conditional on the applicant's satisfactory completion of remedial courses. Such courses will not count toward the program credit requirement, but in some cases they may be taken after admission to the program.
• Students must submit GRE scores for the general test.
• International students for whom English is a second language must provide TOEFL scores to demonstrate English proficiency.
• Students must arrange for a graduate faculty advisor in the program to serve as their major advisor.

Course of Study

CORE REQUIREMENTS (21 CREDITS)

• PRIM 501 Introduction to Primatology (every fall), 4 credits
  PRIM 503 Current Issues in Primatology (spring, odd years), 4 credits
  PRIM 504 Primate Culture and Cognition (winter, even years), 4 credits
  PRIM 505 History of Primate Interconnections (winter, odd years), 4 credits
  PSY 550 Research in Natural Environments (every winter), 5 credits (OR advisor-approved alternate)

  ADDITIONAL COURSES (24 CREDITS)
  Electives (to be selected by advisement), 18 credits (see below)
  PRIM 700 Thesis, 6 credits

  Total Credits 45

  ELECTIVES

  Electives should be selected in consultation with the student’s faculty advisor. Note that students can also opt to select courses from among several foci.

  Primate Behavior and Ecology courses.

  • ANTH 412 Long Term Primate Studies (coming soon PRIM 512 Long Term Primate Studies)
  • ANTH 418 Primate Evolution (coming soon PRIM 518 Primate Evolution)
  • PRIM 511 Primate Conservation
  • PRIM 516 Pongid Behavior

  Students can take classes in philosophy that have relevance for how nonhuman animals are treated, their status in terms of legal rights, and the history of how humans have viewed and classified nonhumans as, for example, property or as being fundamentally different from humans.

  • PHIL 463 Philosophy of Mind
  • PHIL 465 Advanced Ethics
  • PHIL 480 Philosophy of Science
  • PHIL 498 Special Topics

  Students can take courses in biology and anthropology that address conservation issues from both the perspectives of indigenous peoples and what biology can teach us regarding the effective long term management of small populations.

  • BIOL 453 Mammalogy
  • BIOL 501 Research Methods and Techniques
  • BIOL 566 Conservation Biology
  • BIOL 570 Developments in Organismic Biology
  • PRIM 511 Primate Conservation
  • REM 540 Ecology and Culture

  Students can focus on the close relationship between the disciplines of primatology and psychology.

  • PSY 441 Self-Injurious Behavior
  • PSY 460 Cognitive Psychology
  • PSY 473 Psychology of Thought and Language
  • PSY 484 Violence and Aggression
  • PSY 542 Evolutionary Psychology
  • PSY 552 Human Growth and Development Advanced
  • PSY 555 Design and Analysis for Applied Research
  • PSY 558 Advanced Statistics
  • PSY 565 Advanced Animal Behavior
  • PSY 576 Comparative Psychology
  • PSY 578 Applied Physiological Psychology
  • PSY 580 Current Issues in Psychology

  Students can focus on developing management skills that can be applied to free-living and captive nonhuman primates or other species. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to both model conservation strategies and to gain insight into basic research questions. Students could choose courses from those offered in Central’s Resource Management graduate program.

  • BIOL 566 Conservation Biology
  • REM 502 Policy and Law in Resource Management
  • REM 515 GIS in Resource Management
  • REM 562 Issues and Conflicts in Resource Management

  At least 30 credits of course work must be graded (rather than Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory). Students will follow the deadlines detailed in the Office of Graduate Studies and Research website.

• Credit toward the graduate degree will not be accepted for courses in which a grade of lower than C is earned.
• Grades for all courses included on the Course of Study must average at least a 3.0, where the cumulative grade point average is calculated on all courses taken after admittance into a graduate program, whether part of the approved Course of Study or not. A graduate student whose cumulative grade point average falls below 3.0 at the end of any quarter will be placed on academic probation for the next academic quarter. While on probation, a student may not hold a graduate assistantship. If the cumulative grade point average remains below 3.0 after a second consecutive quarter, the student will no longer eligible to continue in the Master's program.
• No human or animal research of any kind may be conducted without obtaining prior approval from the relevant department and university review committees. In the case of research with human subjects, the review is conducted by the Human Subjects Review Board. Animal research is subject to regulation by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
• In order to complete the MS degree, graduate students in the PB program are required to complete a thesis, project, or submit a journal article to a peer-reviewed journal.