About
The Department of Zoology is internationally renowned for its research in a variety of modern biological sciences including ecology, evolution, physiology, cell biology, and developmental biology. The department has many strong interdisciplinary connections between these different areas of research.
Zoology has a solid computing infrastructure of computer labs, computer servers, loaner equipment, colour and poster printers, and three knowledgeable computing support staff. See our other departmental research and teaching facilities.
UBC has a great library with full on-line access to almost all journals, as well as Web of Science, etc. Access to this material facilitates the process of research. If you are interested in the Department's graduate theses, faculty and affiliated research centres, please visit the Research section of our website.
The Department offers graduate degree programs at both Doctoral and Master’s level.
Original research supervised by a faculty member constitutes the major component of work toward the PhD degree. PhD students are not required to complete course work unless it is recommended by the thesis committee or unless the student has been admitted without a Master's degree (see point 4).
All PhD students are required to present a research proposal and pass a comprehensive examination on their research area within 18 months of their program start date. Each PhD student is expected to deliver a one-hour lecture on their completed doctoral research in one of the departmental lecture series before their doctoral dissertation examination (visit Current students page for more information)
A Master’s degree is expected to take two years, although faster progress is encouraged. The MSc degree requires a combination of coursework and research for a total of 30 credits. 12 credits of coursework are taken, with the remaining 18 credits being thesis research.
Students have considerable flexibility in their choice of courses including graduate and senior undergraduate courses in Zoology, Botany, Microbiology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Fisheries, Genetics, Conservation, and Earth and Oceans Sciences, as well as several other departments. Students may also design their own courses in the form of "Directed Studies" supervised by a faculty member other than their supervisor.
At the end of their two year program, MSc students are expected to complete an oral defense of their Master’s thesis (visit Current Students page for more information).