University of Arkansas

Program Description:  This multidisciplinary program prepares students for careers in the development and manufacturing of micro- to nanoscale materials, processing, and devices in such industries as biosensing, photonics, telecommunications, microelectronics, and MEMs. Typical students in this program will be full-time students residing on campus, but provisions may be made to support remotely located part-time students already engaged in professional careers.

Philosophy of Graduate Education: All entering graduate students from June 1 through May 31 of the following year are formed into a cohort. Cohort members form a natural work group during their first 24 months of graduate school, and the cohort members receive training in how to effectively apply their academic knowledge in professional group environments such as research- or teaching-based academic departments, large governmental research labs, or industrial settings. The cohort training also fosters a supportive graduate community atmosphere that enhances the likelihood of academic success of all the program’s graduate students.The techniques used for this training have been developed at the University of Arkansas under the financial sponsorship of the NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training program, and the Department of Education’s Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education program. Through these methods, our graduate students exit our degree programs with the equivalent of one and a half years of on-the-job training in management techniques useful in a technology-based professional career setting.