GRADUATE STUDIES

The University

The university campus is well known for its natural beauty and spaciousness, its park-like walks, and its trees and flowering gardens. Extensive indoor and outdoor athletic facilities are available for general use by the university community.

The University sponsors numerous artistic and cultural events which feature internationally known performers and lecturers. In addition, the School of Music and the Department of Theatre sponsor frequent concerts, recitals and plays. Many of the performances take place in the Wharton Center which opened in 1982. This facility houses two theaters: the 2,500-seat Great Hall and the 600-seat Festival Stage.

The campus adjoins East Lansing, a pleasant residential city with a population of about 50,000 and a well-regarded public school system. Lansing, the capital of Michigan, is contiguous with East Lansing. The Detroit metropolitan area is located about 85 miles east of the campus. Michigan State University subscribes to the principles of equal opportunity and affirmitave action. University programs, activities and facilities are available without regard to race, color, sex, religion, creed, national origin, political persuation, sexual preference, marital status, handicap, or age.

The on-campus enrollment at Michigan State University for the 1996 fall semester was approximately 40000, including 8000 graduate and professional students. There were 120 physics graduate students, including 95 Ph.D. candidates, and 25 M.S. candidates; and in addition, there were 18 postdoctoral research associates.

The Graduate Program

To complete the Ph.D. degree, a graduate student must pass the candidacy examination in graduate physics, at the Ph.D. level, and complete a dissertation based on original research. There is no foreign language requirement.

Ph.D. candidates are normally required to do some teaching as part of their degree requirements. While the time of graduate study required for completing the Ph.D. degree varies substantially with individual circumstances, the average time required by recent students here was five years. During the last decade, about 12 students per year have been granted the Ph.D. degree in physics by the University.

The candidacy examination is taken at the begining of the second year of graduate study. Graduate students with normal undergraduate preparation typically take three academic courses per term during the first year in the program. These include Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Physics, Classical Mechanics, and Electrodynamics. In addition to these courses, there is available a full complement of other graduate courses. A weekly general colloquium and an active calendar of seminars in solid state physics, nuclear & accelerator physics, elementary particle physics, and astronomy & astrophysics provide adequate opportunity to become acquainted with current research work presented by leading physicists of this country and abroad.

The departmental research programs provide the graduate student with a wide choice of areas, or combination of areas, in which to persue original research in fulfillment of degree requirements. There are currently 62 faculty members. Of these, 24 are primarily theorists and 38 primarily experimentalists. About 150 research articles in refereed journals are published per year by faculty and students in physics and astronomy.

Financial Support and Cost of Study

The following support is also available for exceptionally skilled incoming graduate students:

• College of Natural Science Doctoral Fellowship;
• Center for Fundamental Materials Research Fellowship for outstanding applicants in materials research;
• NSCL Fellowship;
• and supplemental Herbert Graham Scholarships for qualified applicants.

Tuition for 1996 - 1997 was $210 per credit hour for Michigan residents. Teaching and Research Assistants pay in-state rates and receive a tuition waiver of 6 credits per semester. Out-of-State tuition was $424 per credit hour. Half of the matriculation fees will be paid by MSU for all graduate assistants begining in 1997 - 1998. Registration fees for students in 1996 - 1997 were $275 per semester.

Living and Housing Costs

General Facilities

Research Facilities

Research facilities include

• two superconducting cyclotrons, K500 and K1200, each injected by ECR ion sources and associated apparatus, including
  • the modern A1200 fragment separator which allows efficient production and in-flight separation of rare isotopes;
  • the recently completed high-resolution S800 superconducting magnetic spectrograph;
  • a large 92-inch scattering chamber;
  • a recoil mass separator;
  • 4-pi neutron and charged particle detectors;
• a high-energy gamma ray detector array;
• neutron and charged-particle hodoscopes;
• a number of data acquisition and analysis computers;
• X-ray diffraction apparatus employing X-ray cameras and a 12 Kwatt rotating anode X-ray source;
• photo and electron-beam lithographic facilities for device fabrication with 50nm resolution;
• cryogenic facilities;
• five superconducting magnets;
• two automated SQUID magnetometers;
• an electron spin resonance laboratory;
• an ultrahigh-vacuum four-gun sputtering system;
• a liquid argon calorimeter test station for the DZero experiment at Fermilab and detector development for future high energy accelerators;
• and a state-of-the-art electronics design facility.

Important off-campus facilities in the high-energy area include the accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois; the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York; CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and Argonne National Laboratory, where experiments are currently carried out by MSU faculty and students.

The astronomy faculty makes use of the facilities on campus, which include a 0.6m telescope, and of the observatories at Kitt Peak (Arizona), WIRO (Wyoming), Mounts Wilson and Palomar (California), Sliding Springs (Australia), and Cerro Tololo and Las Campanas (Chile). MSU has joined the SOAR consortium to build a 4-meter telescope near La Serena, Chile.

Computer Facilities

The department has a DEC 3000 Model 500X Alpha AXP minicomputer and a Sun Ultra 170e workstation for interactive and batch use in the VMS and UNIX operating systems. The research groups have additional UNIX and OpenVMS workstations for interactive graphics and specialized uses. All graduate students have accounts on the OpenVMS cluster and the central Sun Solaris machine for use with classwork, electronic mail, and serving World-Wide Web pages.

The University has several micro-computer and graphic laboratories available on campus for use by graduate and undergraduate students on a walk-in basis. The Computer Laboratory also maintains a Sun ES6000 Mini-Supercomputer system, and IBM 3090 system with a vectorprocessor, and a number of other Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX, and IBM AIX systems. These and other computers in the Chemistry Department, the Cyclotron Laboratory and other campus locations can be reached using various networks via the campus high-speed fiber network. Remote computers such as the NSF Supercomputing Centers, facilities at other Michigan universities, and at Fermi National Loboratory can be reached through connections to regional, national and international networks.

Science Theatre

Most importantly, Science Theatre members experience fun and the thrill of sharing the wonders of science with children, parents, and teachers, and are involved in a project which has been called "one of the most worthwhile efforts in science education today."

The Student Shop

ADMISSION