Prospective Students

I am a professor at the University of Arizona in the College of Information Science and I work remotely from Washington state.  That means that though I am a paleontologist most of the students I work with are not. I do mentor students, but in different capacities for different student levels. I often get emails about it, so here are the general things I do and do not do! Please keep in mind I am a 9 month employee - I do not typically work during the summers, nor hire students (volunteer or otherwise) during this time.

Undergraduates - I do occasionally mentor undergraduate research projects, both through Capstones and outside of it. I occasionally will have money to pay students to work on grants, typically in video game design - these jobs are advertised through the university, and are not available upon direct application (aka, don't email me to ask for a job, if I have one I'll put up an advertisement).

Masters - Our department does not have a thesis-based masters program (meaning that our masters students do not typically do research). If you are interested in a paleontology masters, this is not likely the program for you. I do mentor masters capstones projects if they align with my research interests, including game design and science communication projects. I do not have research funding for masters students, nor do I have teaching assistantship positions in my courses. 

PhD - I do not take on PhD students as a primary advisor, but I do sometimes sit on committees or serve as co-advisor or as a minor advisor. I am in a teaching-focused position, so do not have the time or funding to take on PhD students as primary advisor.  I also do not have funding for research assistantships, and do not have teaching assistants for my courses.

Prospective Students - remember I am not in a geology or biology department. If you are pursuing a career in Paleontology, my programs probably aren't a good fit for you unless you're really interested in statistics and data analysis rather than fieldwork.  Essentially, if you want to touch fossils then the programs I'm a part of aren't going to be a good fit for you. 

I am happy to offer informal guidance on data visualization, data analysis, science communication and game design for University of Arizona students. If you aren't a UA student but your project is really interesting, I'm probably happy to offer you informal guidance as well. But I'm rarely on LinkedIn, so probably don't message me there! For those of you looking for guidance on how to become a paleontologist, I'd recommend this old blog post of mine.