How To Apply
- How to Apply to the Master's of Natural Resources Stewardship
- How to Apply to FRS Graduate Programs
- FAQ's
Please note we are no longer accepting applications to the on-line distance program in Rangeland Ecosystem Science.
Not all research areas have space or funding available each year for new students. The first step in the application process is to identify faculty that have research interests similar to your own. The table below lists faculty interests. Click on a faculty member name to visit their web page. Reading their recent publications is a great way to learn more about their research projects and interests.
Once you have identified faculty with whom you share an interest and are interested in working with, contact that faculty directly to discuss the possibility of your attending CSU to work with him or her. This is an important step for you to take because ultimately, the final decision about who is accepted into the program rests with the faculty who would serve as your advisor.
| Faculty Member | Title | Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Tony Cheng | Associate Professor | Participatory, collaborative planning and implementation approaches; the inter-relationship between governmental, non-profit, and for-profit organizations as emergent institutional arrangements; the interplay between local institutional arrangements and national policy. |
| David Cooper | Senior Research Scientist/Associate Professor | Ecosystems characterized by a perennial, seasonal or periodic abundance of water, including peatlands, streams/rivers and their floodplains, marshes, springs, wet meadows, and salt flats. Mountain wetland ecology and hydrology and I have ongoing and recent projects in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, Cascades, Coast Range, Andes, and Carpathian Mountains (Poland and Slovakia). |
| Maria Fernandez-Gimenez | Associate Professor | Ecological and social dimensions of wildland ecosystems, focusing primarily on rangelands including community-based and collaborative natural resource management; traditional and local ecological knowledge; pastoralism and pastoral development; participatory research. |
| Chad Hoffman | Assistant Professor | Wildland fire sciences, the application of physics based wildland fire modeling to current issues in fire and land management, validation of fire behavior models, fuels inventory and management,disturbance ecology and interactions. |
| Kurt Mackes | Assistant Professor | Forestry operations, wood utilization & marketing, and bioenergy derived from woody biomass. |
| Paul Meiman | Assistant Professor | Ecology and management of rangelands, invasive plant ecology and management. |
| Mark Paschke |
Associate Professor/Dean of Research |
Restoration and ecology of disturbed ecosystems, soil and rhizosphere biology, ecology of invasive plant species, nitrogen biogeochemistry, biology of Frankia and actinorhizal plants, ecology of plant-microbe interactions. |
| Robin Reich | Professor | Forest biometrics and spatial statistics. |
| Robin Reid | Director of the Center for Collaborative Conservation | Linked social-ecological systems, collaborative research methods, education and engagement in the drylands of East Africa and Mongolia. Linking and fostering learning about the collaborative conservation initiatives in the American West. |
| Doug Rideout | Professor | Wildfire: Economics of initial attack, economics of prescribed burning and fuels management, interagency strategic planning and fire policy. Timber: Timber sale contracting, forest investment analysis, timber supply and demand. Analysis of the timber industry in public forestry. |
| Courtney Schultz | Assistant Professor | Natural resource policy, planning, and governance, in particular strategies and policies related to monitoring, adaptive management, and dealing with scientific uncertainty. |
| Frederick "Skip" Smith | Professor/Department Head | Ecology of forest productivity and silviculture of forest stands for multiple outputs. |
| John Stednick | Professor | Water quality, biogeochemistry, watershed management. |
| Yu Wei | Associate Professor | Developing and implementing operations research models to integrate economic, ecology and social concerns in forest ecosystem management and planning. |
An official report of your GRE scores is required for all Graduate Applicants. We only require scores for the GRE General test; it is not necessary to take the GRE subject test. There is no minimum score requirement.
An official report of your TOEFL or IELTS scores is required for all international applicants that are from non-English speaking countries. CSU requires a minimum TOEFL score of 213 (computer based), 550 (paper based), or 80 (internet based) or an IELTS score of 6.5 or better for admission without condition.
Copies of score reports issued to you or another party are not acceptable, but you only need to submit your official scores from ETS to CSU once regardless of the number of programs, departments, or even colleges you are pursuing for admission.
The Education Testing Service, ETS, administers both GRE and TOEFL exams. You may request that your scores be sent to CSU when you take your exam(s). The institution code is 4075 and the department code is 0108. ETS will send your scores to CSU electronically where they will be automatically matched up with your application in the university admissions database. We generally receive your results within 4-6 weeks of your testing date.
If you did not initially request that your scores be sent to CSU, you can order additional reports by contacting ETS. Please see the ETS website (http://www.ets.org/) for more information about ordering reports. ETS will send the reports directly to CSU, but it generally takes 4-6 weeks for the reports to arrive and be processed.
ETS only keeps GRE scores for five years, so in order to have an official report sent to CSU, your scores must be less than five years old. The CSU Graduate School will only accept TOEFL or IELTS scores taken within two years prior to admission.
Please visit CSU’s Graduate School website at http://graduateschool.colostate.edu to fill out the online application. There is a $50 application fee for each program that you choose to apply to.
Begin collecting your application materials. It is imperative that your application packet is complete before sending it to us. Note that application submissions vary slightly depending on whether you are a U.S. citizen or an international applicant.
| U.S. Citizen Applicant Checklist | International Applicant Checklist |
|---|---|
|
* A statement of purpose, including a description of your research interests, long and short term goals, and how the graduate program will contribute to both. The statement is important for matching student and professor interests. * Three letters of recommendation from at least two of the following:
* One official transcript from every institution you have attended including institutions where coursework was brief and/or seemingly unrelated to the program(s) you wish to pursue. |
* A statement of purpose, including a description of your research interests, long and short term goals, and how the graduate program will contribute to both. The statement is important for matching student and professor interests. * Three letters of recommendation from at least two of the following:
* One official transcript from every institution you have attended including institutions where coursework was brief and/or seemingly unrelated to the program(s) you wish to pursue. All transcripts must include a certified translation into English. |
Once you have gathered all of the documents above, send them in one packet to:
Josie Self
Forest and Rangeland Stewardship
Colorado State University
1472 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1472 USA
Maintain contact with any faculty that expressed an interest in working with you. It is a fine line between being proactive and going overboard, so please be mindful of their schedules. If they inform you that they are not accepting graduate students for the semester you wish to begin your program, please explore other options.
Is there a form for the letters of reference?
No. We recommend that you ask your references to send the letters directly to you in a sealed envelope. Once you have gathered all your application materials, send everything to the appropriate address, including the letters of reference still sealed in their envelopes.
Can I send a photocopy of my transcripts?
No, we must have official, original copies of all your transcripts.
Do I need to send transcripts if I didn’t get a degree at the college, if the subject area was unrelated to the program I am applying for, if it was a very long time ago, or if it is a foreign university and difficult to get transcripts from?
Yes! We need official transcripts from every institution you have attended, regardless of how long ago it was, how relevant the material studied is to your current interests, and whether or not you completed a degree at that institution. This includes domestic and foreign colleges and universities and community or technical colleges. We do not need copies of your high school transcripts.
If you participated in a study abroad program through a U.S. institution, transcripts are required from the foreign institution only when the U.S. school does not list the course names, credits and grades on its transcript.
How do I get an assistantship?
Whether or not you are offered an assistantship is dependent on your advisor. Many faculty will not accept students unless they have funding; others may. When a faculty member offers to serve as your advisor, ask them if they have funding available for an assistantship.
How will I know when my application is complete?
Your application will not be evaluated until it is complete. The easiest way to ensure your application is complete is to gather all the supporting documents yourself and send them in one packet to the department. Then apply to CSU on-line, and make sure that ETS and IELTS (if appropriate) are sending your scores to CSU. You will receive two emails from the Department. The first will be sent when we receive the on-line application, and it will list any missing application materials. The second will be sent once all of you application materials have been received.
My undergraduate degree is not in natural resources. Can I still be considered for graduate studies in the Department?
Yes! Many of our students come from diverse academic backgrounds. It is up to the faculty to determine if your undergraduate preparation is sufficient for their research program. They may require you to take more prerequisite courses to compensate, and in some cases faculty may ask an applicant to take more coursework before being accepted into the program.
How can I check on the status of my application?
You can send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and ask about the status of your application. You can also check on RamWeb (https://ramweb.colostate.edu/) to see if your GRE scores and/or ETS/IELTS scores have arrived at CSU yet.
