Student Experiences
Internships, Career and Graduate School Opportunities
Research Internships
Thanks to our low student-faculty ratio and ample funding for undergraduate research, nearly any student who wants to do research with a botany faculty member can. In recent years students have worked with faculty on projects in many parts of New England and the continental U.S., as well as Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Venezuela, and Peru, in addition to laboratories in New London Hall. Current faculty and students projects are listed in the Honors and Independent Study page.
Summer Research Opportunities: Research during the summer is an excellent opportunity to undertake an intensive study. There are programs that provide stipends for on-campus summer research including the Keck Undergraduate Science Program (contact any science faculty member for details), research grants to faculty, and other funded programs. If you are interested, just ask a faculty member for details. There are also several off-campus research opportunities. The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (Ithaca, NY) recently announced its Plant Genome Research Program (applications due February 15, 2008).
Careers and Graduate Programs
Botany students have a wide range of career options after they graduate from Connecticut College. Some enter the workforce in jobs directly related to their major, as field botanists who conduct plant surveys for environmental or private agencies, in a laboratory setting, or in the classroom as a teacher. Examples include career opportunities at the Nature Conservancy, Monsanto (Mystic, CT), and Pfizer (Groton, CT), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science "Project 2061" (Washington, DC). Other careers related to plants are collected at the Botanical Society of America's "Careers in Botany" website and the American Society of Plant Biologists. To read profiles of students majoring in botany across the US click here.
Other students decide to continue their education by attending graduate school. The department receives information from many graduate programs across the country and posts the information on the large display area outside the department office (211 New London Hall).
Newly received:
- UNCF-Merk Science Initiative -- Science Research Scholarship Awards (up to $25,000); must have junior year academic status (see www.uncf.org/merk)
- Purdue University Interdisciplinary Life Science Program -- Plant Biology Training Group
- University of California Riverside -- Botany & Plant Sciences
Students in, or recently completing, graduate school include:
- Emily Elliott, UC San Francisco, National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (Honors Thesis with Professor Owen)
- Kathy Lindahl, Harvard Ph.D. (Honors Thesis with Professor Owen)
Recent graduates: if you would like to be included as an example, please contact Professor Owen.
Last Modified: Friday, January 25, 2008 13:56