Graduate student assistantships

Dr. Geerts’s research supports several graduate research assistantships (GAs). The GA stipend allows you to live comfortably as a student in Laramie. In addition to the stipend, you will receive free tuition, fees, and health insurance. Our GA stipends are very competitive, and the stipend level depends on the student’s educational background, research experience, and progress made.

 

Most graduate students have the opportunity to participate in field work. The primary research tools used by our group are the Wyoming Cloud Radar and King Air, but a range of resources is used, depending on the experiment, such as radiosondes, surface stations, scanning radars, profiling remote sensors, and satellite data. Even though the focus is on observations, we also use NWP model output and on occasion run our own WRF simulations.

Applications for the PhD track take precedence over MSc applications. Strong applicants with only a BSc degree may apply for admission at the PhD level. The application criteria that are most important to us are your GRE score, any peer-reviewed publications you may have (co-authored), and your transcripts of of degree(s) awarded. All students in the PhD track take a qualifying examination, typically offered at the end of the first year. More details can be found on the Department’s pages.

The University of Wyoming is the only university in the state of Wyoming, and has only 11,000 FTE students. Year after year the university receives high rankings in national surveys, especially for its commitment of resources to its students, a category in which it ranks the highest in the nation. Laramie is a small but vibrant college community with ready access to the Snowy Range and other mountain ranges in the Rockies. Laramie has beautiful, dry summers and can be quite cold in winter, being at 2200 m altitude. It has the dual advantage of being close to the metropolitan areas of the Colorado Front Range, but without the high cost of living, traffic jams, and the hustle & bustle of the Front Range.