This story appears in The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society's student newsletter
Professional Preface, vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 2-3.
Searching For A Graduate School? Go Surfing!
Finding the right graduate school to continue your education can take a lot of
time and effort. One of the best places to begin your search is the Internet's
World Wide Web (WWW), which offers indexes of colleges and universities
throughout the world. Many schools now have their own home pages on the WWW and
include complete course catalogs for undergraduate and graduate programs.
Home pages on the WWW allow web surfers the opportunity to find out about
universities or colleges and specific programs while also offering a glimpse of
the school's personality. Many sites include pictures or other graphics of the
school, faculty and staff listings (including e-mail addresses), a student
directory, and summaries of life on and off the campus (e.g., where to get the
best meal, the cheapest beer, or the cleanest apartment).
If you're thinking about graduate school, you can begin on the WWW by linking
to a directory of schools. One link
(http://www.yahoo.com/Education/Universities) lists only universities according
to country. By taking the address one step further
(http://www.yahoo.com/Education/Universities/United_States) browsers can
alphabetically search universities in the United States. Another site
(http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html) lists both international
colleges and universities. Searches can be done either alphabetically or
geographically. This site also includes examples of the best home pages based
on the opinions of people like yourself using the index to search for
schools.
To give you an idea of what's available on the WWW, we checked out the
graduate programs at the WWW sites of the five 1995 Chapters of Excellence
Contest winners. The following are brief summaries of what we found.
Ohio State University (http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu)
The Materials Science and Engineering Department offers traditional
thesis-based M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, as well as a non-thesis M.S. option. The
engineering and metallurgical engineering programs are among the top five
national rankings of the Gourman Report; the materials science and engineering
program is too new to be evaluated. The school participates in the
manufacturing systems and engineering and the practice-oriented manufacturing
engineering master's degree programs, which encourage close industrial
interaction. Nearly all of the graduate students are supported by graduate
research associateships or industrial fellowships.
University of Alabama (http://www.ua.edu)
The Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department offers M.S. degrees in
engineering and metallurgical engineering and Ph.D. degrees in metallurgical
engineering. An interdisciplinary Ph.D. degree in materials science is also
offered. Facilities are available for various processes, including directional
and high-speed solidification, optical and electron microscopy, x-ray
diffraction, and electrochemistry. A metal-casting facility is equipped with
up-to-date metal melting and casting equipment. Machinists are available for
construction of highly specialized equipment.
University of British Columbia (http://view.ubc.ca)
The Metals and Materials Engineering Department offers courses in casting and
solidification of metals, ceramic processes and properties, corrosion, fiber
composites, hydrometallurgy and electrorefining, physical metallurgy,
pyrometallurgy, remelting processes, thermomechanical processing, and
environmental processing. There are five degrees available--M.A.Sc. degrees in
metals and materials engineering, M.Sc. degrees in materials and metallurgy,
M.Eng. degrees in metals and materials engineering, and Ph.D. degrees in metals
and materials engineering and materials and metallurgy.
The Mining and Mineral Process Engineering Department offers courses in the
fields of mining and mineral processing, including coal preparation. Three
degrees are offered--M.A.Sc. degrees, M..Eng. degrees, and Ph.D. degrees.
University of Florida (http://www.ufl.edu)
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering offers M.S., M.Eng.,
Ph.D., and Engineer degrees that may be obtained with specialization in metal,
ceramic, polymeric, or electronic materials. Specific areas of concentration
include biomaterials, ceramics, corrosion, diffusion, glasses, mechanical
behavior, quantitative microscopy, mineral processing, reaction kinetics in the
solid state, structural analysis, composites, compound semiconductors,
optoelectronic materials, integrated circuit materials, and high-temperature
superconductors.
University of Michigan (http://www.umich.edu)
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering offers M.S. or Ph.D.
degrees. Because of the diverse backgrounds of graduate students coming into
the program, and the equally diverse direction their interests may take them,
there are no specific courses required of all graduate students. Students may
emphasize various materials categories or phenomena, although the department
encourages a broad experience. Interdisciplinary programs are available.