School of
Graduate Studies

GRADUATE SCHOOL OPPORTUNITIES

Although most programs are accepting students, below are some departments/professors who are actively looking for graduate students.

Graduate Student Positions in the Sciences

TERRESTRIAL IMAGING CENTRE

The Alberta Terrestrial Imaging Center is currently looking for 2 master candidates to complete a graduate degree at the University of Lethbridge, in the area of environmental monitoring using earth observation. The students will work with a team involved in a TECTERRA funded project focused on the monitoring of site reclamation in Alberta using remote sensing technologies. The successful applicants’ thesis research will be directly related to investigating the development of advanced methods for extracting information about the condition of the land from multispectral, hyperspectral and/or LiDAR data.  The candidates are required to have a bachelor degree in geography, forestry, or related environmental sciences and meet the minimum requirements for admission into the University of Lethbridge’s School of Graduate Studies*. Knowledge of geomatics, mathematics and/or programming would be an asset.
 
Salary: 17,000$ per year. Exceptional students can apply for additional funding through the NSERC-CREATE AMETHYST program (5,000$)
Please send your application to nadia.rochdi@imagingcenter.ca.  http://www.uleth.ca/graduatestudies/content/admissions-master-science

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Dr. Sarah Boon:  MSc and PhD students in mountain hydrology

Dr. Theresa Burg: MSc students in landscape genetics, phylogeography, population connectivity and speciation in birds

Dr. Larry Flanagan:  MSc or PhD students in ecosystem science and global change: the response ofecosystems to experimental warming and altered precipitation

Dr. Chris Hugenholtz:  MSc students in sand dune geomorphology (may possibly attend)

Dr. Dan Johnson: MSc or PhD student in sustainable agriculture, ecology and biogeography

Dr. Matthew Letts:  MSc or PhD students in plant ecophysiological  response to environmental stress

Dr. Derek Peddle: PhD and MSc students for the NSERC CREATE AMETHYST Remote Sensing Program

Dr. Steward Rood:  MSc or PhD students in river flows and regulation, riparian floodplain ecology and management, especially cottonwood ecophysiology

Dr. Brent Selinger: MSc student on the characterization of a novel family of phytate degrading enzymes

PhD position in Environmental Immunochemistry
The project consists in the development of a novel antibody-based method for the determination of manure-borne estrogens in water, soil and compost. 
The student must have completed a M.Sc. in biology, molecular biology, immunology or protein chemistry (or related fields of research). I am looking for a student who is interested in the environmental monitoring of estrogens.  Skills in molecular biology would be great, and experience with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) would be a plus. 
The work will include the creation of an antibody library from rabbits, the isolation of estrogen-specific antibodies from the library, the development of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and an immuno-PCR for the determination of selected estrogens in environmental matrices including water, soil and compost.
Start date: September 2012 (preferred) or January 2013
Supervisor:
Dr. Claudia Sheedy
Claudia.sheedy@agr.gc.ca
(403) 317-2273
Location:
Lethbridge Research Centre
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

For questions and further information: please contact Dr. Sheedy.

KINESIOLOGY (M.Sc. or Ph.D. Position)

One graduate student position (M.Sc. or Ph.D.) is available in the Brain in Action laboratory (Principal Investigator: Claudia L. R. Gonzalez, Canada Research Chair Tier II) within the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Lethbridge.  The candidate should have a strong background in neuroscience, psychology or kinesiology with interests in sensory and motor interactions. Experience with psychophysical design and analysis, eye-tracking, or motion-tracking is desirable. The selected student will join projects that assess the role of vision and hapsis in reaching and grasping, hemispheric differences in sensorimotor integration and control, and cognitive (i.e. memory, attention, spatial abilities, language) and motor interactions. The laboratory is equipped with an eye-tracker (Eyelink II), a motion-tracking system (Optotrak Certus) and functional transcranial Doppler sonography for cerebral blood flow measurements. Access to EEG and TMS are also available through collaborations within the Department and with the Canadian Centre of Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN). Applications, including a curriculum vitae (CV), a letter of intent that specifies research interests, the contact information of two referees, and a copy of undergraduate/graduate transcripts, should be sent directly to claudia.gonzalez@uleth.ca. 

CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY

Position announcement: Dr. Stacey Wetmore (Canada Research Chair in Computational Chemistry) is actively recruiting both M.Sc. and Ph.D. graduate students to study the chemistry of DNA damage and repair in our bodies. Research in the Wetmore laboratory uses computational approaches ranging from small models treated with highly accurate levels of theory (ab initio, DFT) to large models treated with more computational efficient techniques (MM, MD, ONIOM, QM/MM) to characterize the structure, properties and reaction mechanisms related to DNA damage and repair.

Previous experience with molecular modeling is not required. Instead, students with strong backgrounds in chemistry and/or biochemistry will be trained in the field of computational chemistry throughout their degree. Furthermore, an interdisciplinary approach is adopted in the Wetmore lab through close collaborations with the top national and international experimental chemistry and biochemistry. This approach allows graduate students to obtain first class training in both computational and experimental science from experts in the respective fields, where graduate students work closely with collaborators through regular site visits.

These positions are available starting immediately. Please send your curriculum vitae, a letter of application and the names of 3 references to Dr. Stacey Wetmore, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Graduate Student Positions in the Fine Arts and Music 

NEW MEDIA

Building on the New Media Department’s reputation for first class undergraduate education in the areas of 3D art and animation; digital video, film and the moving image; interactive arts; new media theory and culture; and visual design for digital and electronic media, the MFA (New Media) offers those wishing to pursue intensive studio-based graduate studies, the opportunity to be part a community of highly active faculty artists, scholars, and researchers.

This program combines advanced instruction with a strong theoretical and practical foundation in areas related to faculty research interests. Students will develop and hone their creative talents by way of access to first-rate design and animation software, high end motion-capture technology, and digital video production equipment. The program offers an exceptional level of interaction with faculty and staff.

THEATRE AND DRAMATIC ARTS

Building on the University of Lethbridge Theatre & Dramatic Arts Department's reputation for first class undergraduate education in the areas of Technical Theatre and Design, Performance, and Theatre Studies, the MFA with a major in Theatre & Dramatic Arts offers those wishing to pursue graduate education the opportunity to be part of a community of highly active faculty practitioners and scholars.

This program provides graduate students with opportunities to pursue excellence through integrated study in theory and practice, and offers an exceptional level of interaction with faculty and staff.

ART

Building on the University of Lethbridge Art Department’s reputation for first class undergraduate education in Art Studio and Art History/ Museum Studies, the MFA with a major in Art offers those wishing to pursue graduate education in Art Studio the opportunity to be part of a community of highly active faculty practitioners and scholars.

This program provides graduate students with opportunities to pursue disciplinary excellence through integrated study in theory and practice, encompassing material, critical and conceptual investigations in contemporary art, and offers an exceptional level of interaction with faculty and visiting artists.

MUSIC

Building on the University of Lethbridge Music Department’s reputation for first-class undergraduate education in performance and composition, the MMus offers those wishing to pursue graduate studies the opportunity to be part of a community of experienced and active performing musicians and scholars. 

The program combines advanced studio instruction with a strong theoretical and practical foundation in these areas: voice, piano, collaborative piano, French horn, violin, conducting, and composition.  It also involves master classes with visiting artists and numerous performance opportunities at the University and in the larger community of Lethbridge

Graduate Student Positions in the Arts

PHILOSOPHY

The Department of Philosophy invites applications for an M.A. in Philosophy. The Department has strengths in the Philosophy of Science, Ethics, Meta-Ethics, Logic, Philosophy of Mind, Wittgenstein and the History of Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of War and Peace, and the Philosophy of Language.  The M.A. in Philosophy is a two-year thesis based program.

MDST

The Master of Art with a major in Individualized Multidisciplinary (MDST) Social Science program is a unique graduate program that offers opportunities for critical dialogues across academic disciplines with an emphasis on social, cultural and political thought.

What does the program look like?  

The program offers graduate degrees with concentrations in Anthropology, Kinesiology, Sociology or Women and Gender Studies.  There are different course requirements for each concentration

The program integrates a range of theoretical and practical approaches used in the social sciences and fosters scholarship in both contemporary and historical fields of research.

The program incorporates both course work and independent thesis research. Coursework is customized to present students with a range of theories and methods specific to their research interests.

The IMMA Social Sciences is overseen by a Program Coordinator  who is assisted by an advisory committee composed of faculty representatives actively teaching and supervising from each of the Departments involved in the program.

Graduates of the program will be prepared to continue in academia or to work as critically engaged citizens in a variety of work environments.

·      Requirements for Degree http://www.uleth.ca/ross/calendar/sgs/ma_msc/degree_reqs.html#999559

·      Funding Opportunities http://www.uleth.ca/graduatestudies/content/ma-and-msc-0

·      Faculty and Courses http://www.uleth.ca/graduatestudies/content/imma-faculty

·      Information for New Students http://www.uleth.ca/graduatestudies/content/ma-mfa-mmus-msc-phd

*Master of Arts, Individualized Multidisciplinary Option 2

Faculty: Teaching and supervisory faculty are primarily affiliates from Anthropology, Kinesiology, Sociology, and Women and Gender Studies. The coursework is customized to present students with a range of theories and methods specific to their research interests.

 Dr. Carly Adams Kinesiology and Physical Education Research Interests: 20th century Canadian sport and recreation history, gender, oral and regional sport history, women’s hockey, the modern Olympic movement

Dr. Glenda Tibe Bonifacio Women and Gender Studies Intersections of gender and migration with emphasis on citizenship and feminism involving immigrant youth, racialized women and foreign workers in Australia, Canada, and the Philippines.

 Dr. Sean Brayton Kinesiology and Physical Education Research Interests: Cultural studies of the body; critical multiculturalism; narratives of race and labour in film and television (with a focus on comedy, melodrama and science fiction).

 Dr. Michelle Helstein Kinesiology and Physical Education Research Interests: Cultural studies, poststructural feminist theory, and popular culture as they intersect with sport, physical activity and the body, including media constructions of physical activity and sport discourses; production and consumption of cultural identities; and desire and identification

Dr. Jerimy Cunningham Anthropology Research Interests: Ethnoarchaeology; anthropology of consumption; domesticity; craft production; Marxism; post-positivist philosophy of science; African ethnology (Mali); Archaeology of Northern Mexico, Plains Archaeology, and Ontario Archaeology. 

Dr. Catherine Kingfisher Anthropology Research Interests: Neoliberalism as a cultural system, globalization, policy, poverty, power and inequality, personhood, language and discourse, happiness and well-being, qualitative research methods, North America (Canada & the U.S.), and /New Zealand

Dr. Robert Kossuth Kinesiology and Physical Education Research Interests: History of sport, recreation, and leisure in 19th and early 20th century Canada; Local historical experience; rugby and Canadian football; issues relating to masculinity and manliness as located in various sport and recreation practices.

Dr. Jason Laurendeau Sociology Research Interests: Cultural Studies of Sport and the Body; Masculinities; Risk; Autoethnography; Deviance and Social Control

Dr. Suzanne Lenon Women and Gender Studies Research Interests: Politics of Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Queer Rights; Law, Gender and Sexuality; Critical Race Feminisms: Theory and Practice

Dr. James MacKenzie Anthropology Research Interests: Anthropology of religion, Weberian social theory, contemporary Maya culture, ethnic activism (local and extralocal contexts), economic migration, shamanism, charismatic Christianity, inculturation theology, ethnohistory;  research sites: Guatemala, Southern California.

Dr. Kimberly Mair Sociology Research Interests: Sensoriality and aesthetics of communication in relation to space, body, and self-constitution; the study of the urban guerrilla movement in the former West Germany and contemporary art practices.

Dr. Claudia Malacrida Sociology Research Interests: Foucauldian and feminist perspectives on the body, disability, and motherhood; eugenics and institutionalization in Western Canada, comparative research on disability, family, and mothering policy in Canada and the UK, elective C-sections and the medicalization of childbirth

Dr. Tiffany Muller Myrdahl Women and Gender Studies Research Interests: Feminist geography, place and the politics of identity, geographies of leisure and consumption, geographies of identity and difference (with emphasis on gender and sexuality), cultural politics of leisure landscapes, employing oral histories to analyse urban change, leisure and urban political economy, uneven urban development

Dr. Janice Newberry Anthropology Research Interests: The state and governance; child studies; domesticity and gender; economic anthropology; international political economy; theories of exchange and economy, the informal sector and domestic labour  Space and place; urban studies; fieldwork in central Java, Indonesia since 1992

 Dr. William Ramp Sociology Research Interests: Historical and cultural sociology; the history of social theory, aesthetics, material culture; Durkheimian and post-Durkheimian theory of religion, selfhood, and collective memory; Moral and political culture of early 20th-century agrarian progressivism, emigrant networks and nostalgic nationalism among nineteenth-century Scottish-Canadians; the culture and politics of nineteenth-century art-collecting.

Dr. Carol Williams Women and Gender Studies Research Interests: Comparative perspectives on indigeneity, women, and settler colonialism; histories and theories of feminism; North American women's history (US & Canada); history of reproductive rights and behaviours; transnational women-directed cinema and documentary film. 

Dr. Patrick Wilson Anthropology Research Interests: Indigenous social movements; NGOs and development; agrarian history and food security; fair trade; Amazon; Andes; Ecuador; Colombia

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

Postdoctoral Scholar Opportunity: PSYCHOSOCIAL ASPECTS OF BODY WEIGHT

A full-time Postdoctoral Scholar opportunity in Psychosocial Aspects of Body Weight is available at the University of Calgary, Canada, to begin on or about September 1, 2013.

Preliminary inquiries by e-mail are welcome. To apply, individuals should submit a CV, letter of interest addressing goodness of fit, and 2 letters of recommendation by February 15, 2013 to Dr. Shelly Russell-Mayhew @ mkrussel@ucalgary.ca. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Applicants are thanked in advance for their interest, however, only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Further information about the postdoctoral recruitment is available at  the University of Calgary website.

GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIP IN THE LETHBRIDGE JOURNAL

The Lethbridge Journal Incubator is a new joint initiative of the University of Lethbridge Library and the School of Graduate Studies under the direction of Professor Daniel Paul O'Donnell in the Department of English.

The Incubator provides Graduate Students with Research Assistantships and trains them to act as managing editors and production supervisors for scholarly journals published at the University of Lethbridge. This training involves skills that are readily transferable to other research tasks and in high demand in the public and private sector. For more information on the Incubator, please see our website:

http://www.uleth.ca/lib/incubator

The Incubator has a vacancy for one Research Assistant, from Jan 1 through June 30 (open to renewal). Research Assistantships in the Incubator are worth $7000/annum (pro-rated in this case for six months) and may be held in addition to the standard School of Graduate Studies Graduate Teaching Assistantship. Research Assistantships are awarded competitively based on the disciplinary needs of the incubator, the background and skills of the applications, and recommendations of supervisors and references. Research Assistantships in the incubator require a minimum of 120 hours work per annum, exclusive of training.

No previous experience with publication is necessary; all training will be provided. The positions are open to students with any disciplinary background, though experience or interest in one or more of the following areas would be an advantage:

• Modern Languages
• Literature
• Linguistics
• History
• Digital Humanities
• Computer Science
• New Media

If you are interested in this position, please contact Daniel O'Donnell as soon as possible. In your email, please provide the following:

• A CV
• A statement of your disciplinary background and research interests
• Names and contact information for three references (this may include your supervisor)
• A brief writing sample or other evidence of your editing skills.

AMETHYST PROGRAM

• Graduate Pathways: Internships in detail
• Graduate students involved in our AMETHYST Pathways Program will hold NSERC Post-Graduate Scholarships, Alberta Ingenuity Graduate Student Scholarships, or UL Graduate Scholarships.  Graduate students involved in the AMETHYST program will be awarded a short-term internship.  The goal of this internship will be to provide the student with a training experience directly related to their graduate research.  This internship could be hosted by government, industry or university laboratories and would provide additional networking and important skill development for our students.  Students at the master’s level would be awarded a single internship, while Ph.D. students would receive two research internships.  As many of the students at the graduate level would be joining the AMETHYST program for the first time, the skills and technical workshops would also be available as well as the formulation of a professional development strategy and plan for each student.AMETHYST will facilitate the participation of graduate students in national and international conferences and meetings that will allow them to validate their work, establish research networks, and develop skills for both research presentations and science presentations to non-scientists. Due to the wide variety of research activities covered by the AMETHYST core team members, the graduate students will benefit from the transfer of knowledge and expertise between interdisciplinary research groups.  AMETHYST graduate students will be involved directly in the research dissemination process to develop and enhance their verbal communication and scientific writing skills.  These opportunities will include conferences, specialist meetings, and AMETHYST workshops.

RNA RESEARCH POSITIONS

• Positions are available for studying the molecular mechanism of protein synthesis.
• The interdisciplinary approach used in our group combines quantitative biochemistry and biophysics with computational techniques to describe and study the dynamic properties of ribonucleoprotein complexes. The successful candidates will have the opportunity to work in a truly multidisciplinary research environment and to gain experience in the “wet-lab” as well as in the computational lab.
• Experience with molecular biology, protein biochemistry, and biophysical (Spectroscopic) techniques will be helpful but not required. A background in computational biochemistry such as molecular dynamics and QM/MM approaches would be beneficial.
• These positions are available starting immediately. Please send your curriculum vitae, a letter of application, and 3 references to: Dr. Hans-Joachim Wieden, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry