Soil Science
- Overview
- Faculty Research
- Research Facilities
- Financial Aid
- Admission
- Courses
- Criteria for Satisfactory Progress
| Administrative Unit: | Soil Science |
| College/School: | College of Agricultural and Life Sciences |
| Admitting Plans: | M.S., Ph.D. |
| Degrees Offered: | M.S., Ph.D. |
| Minors and Certificates: | Ph.D. Minor |
Faculty: Professors Ventura (chair), Bland, Bleam, Bockheim, Hickey, Kung, Lowery, Madison, McSweeney, Norman; Associate Professors Balser, Barak, Long, Pedersen, Powell, and Zhu; Assistant Professors Balster, Laboski, and Soldat
Overview
The UW-Madison Department of Soil Science is one of the oldest, largest, and most prominent departments of soil science in the United States. The department's mission is to provide instruction, research, and extension leadership in application of soil chemistry, physics, biology, and pedology to economic and environmentally sound land use. Programs are designed to improve basic understanding and practical management of soil resources in natural, agricultural, and urban ecosystems, and to serve local, state, national, and international interests. The department proactively implements the Wisconsin Idea of outreach to the extended community to provide all generations with an appreciation of soil as a natural resource and a better understanding of the scientific basis of production agriculture and integrated land use and environmental protection.
Soil science entails describing and classifying soils and applying the principles of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biology to environmentally sound management of soil and biological resources, and resolution of land degradation problems.
The department is committed to integrated programs of instruction, research, extension, and outreach that address societal goals of responsible stewardship of soil and water resources and preservation of environmental quality. Explicit in the department's mission is the need to balance sustained, economically viable production of food and fiber and socially equitable land use with environmental protection and preservation.
The importance of soils in crop production, environmental issues, turf and grounds management, soil conservation, global climate change, carbon sequestration, rural and urban planning, and waste disposal are integrated into the department's course offerings and research programs. Graduate study in soil science provides the basic and applied scientific training needed for teaching, research, and other professional work in the agricultural, earth, and environmental sciences. The department office maintains specific information concerning career placements.
Graduates from the department occupy leading positions in industry, government, education, and research in agricultural and natural resources and environmental science throughout the world. Of the more than 1,000 alumni of the department's graduate program, many are deans, directors, chairs, faculty, and staff at universities in both the United States and other countries, or in important positions in government, regulatory agencies, research institutions, agribusinesses, chemical industries, and recreational and conservation organizations.
The number of graduate students enrolled in the program over the past 10 years has averaged 20 per year, with about half pursuing master's degrees and half pursuing doctorates. International students generally comprise about 30 percent of the total. Department faculty also direct an additional 15 graduate students in multidisciplinary research in soils-related programs.
Faculty Research
Many field-research projects on soil and water problems are conducted in cooperation with state and federal agencies, agribusinesses, municipalities, and private farmers. The department cooperates closely with the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, Molecular and Environmental Toxicology Center, and U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service in conducting modern soil surveys and addressing problems of groundwater contamination. Relationships between soils and forests are studied at tree nurseries and in state, private, and commercial forests throughout the state in cooperation with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the pulp and paper industry.
Through a long and continuing commitment of faculty time and expertise to international agriculture, the department has assisted in the creation of agricultural colleges in several developing nations and has attracted outstanding graduate students from many countries. Current involvement is focused on several countries including China, Trinidad/Tobago, Spain, Australia, Argentina, and Antarctica.
In keeping with its status as a premier institution in the field, many department faculty have been recognized nationally and internationally for their contributions to science. Three of only four soil scientists appointed to the National Academy of Sciences are from the department. Several other faculty members have received local and national academic, professional-society, trade-association, and industrial prizes and awards for teaching, research, and extension education and serve on important state, national, and international committees. Many faculty members have been recognized for their contributions by election to honorary fellowship in the Soil Science Society of America, the American Society of Agronomy, and allied professional societies; and several have been president of these societies.
Current faculty are heavily involved in cooperative interdisciplinary research undertakings with scientists and organizations within and beyond the university, such as UW-Madison's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Molecular and Environmental Toxicology Center, Environmental Chemistry and Technology Program, and other science departments, state agencies, environmental consulting and service companies, agribusinesses, and trade organizations.
Research Facilities
The department is well equipped with classroom, laboratory, computing, and field facilities for graduate training and research. State-of-the-art scientific instrumentation includes soil moisture tension apparatus; flame-emission and atomic-absorption spectrophotometers and gamma-ray spectrometers; neutron activation analysis equipment; an inductively coupled plasma (ICP)-emission spectrometer and an ICP-mass spectrometer; X-ray fluorescence spectrometer; thin-layer, high-performance liquid, gas, and ion chromatographs; low-mass isotope ratio mass spectrometer; microrespirometers; microtiter-plate counters; infrared and ultraviolet spectrophotometers; phase-contrast, polarizing and epifluorescence microscopy and photomicrography equipment; eddy correlation systems for heat, moisture, and CO2 fluxes; ground-penetrating radar; high-resolution digital imaging; dynamic light scattering and particle electrophoresis equipment; flow field flow fractionation; and accelerated solvent extractor. Field equipment includes a truck-mounted hydraulic soil probe with well-drilling capabilities; a plot-field harvest combine; various production field equipment (planters, tillage equipment, rainfall simulator); differential-global position system; and particle counter.
Excellent data-collection, datalogging, computing, and networking facilities are available for basic research and graduate training. In addition to computing facilities maintained by individual researchers for their students, the department makes available to its graduate students a computer graphics facility for the production of sophisticated graphic output.
Specialized facilities are available for research in molecular biology, modern environmental microbiology, in vitro toxicology and bioassays, and contaminated-site remediation in newly remodeled laboratories. Soils graduate students and faculty have shared access to major advanced physicochemical, x-ray, and electron microscopy analytical equipment through the Materials Science Center, National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison, National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratories, and other UW-Madison science and engineering departments. Facilities, vehicles, machinery, and instrumentation are available for conducting field experiments at ten strategically located UW Agricultural Research Stations and the O.J. Noer Turfgrass Research and Education Facility. Fieldwork for agricultural production and environmental protection is also supported by daily information from the CALS agricultural weather-station network as well as soils, crops, land-use, and natural resources analysis using land information systems and geographic information systems (LIS/GIS).
Financial Aid
Financial support is usually available to qualified students in the form of research assistantships, mostly funded from research grants; final decision for granting a research assistantship usually rests with the professor(s) supervising the research. Any assistantship for at least one-third time qualifies a student for remission of tuition (though students may be responsible for other administrative fees). The department does not offer teaching assistantships. A limited number of Graduate School fellowships are available to new students with outstanding records. The deadline for application for these competitive fellowships is early January of each year. The department selects the most qualified applicants and forwards their dossiers to a campus-wide selection committee. Two Wisconsin Distinguished Fellowships (the W.R. Kussow/Wisconsin Turfgrass Association and the Leo M. Walsh/Wisconsin Fertilizer and Chemical Association) are available to qualified students. The department also offers the O.N. Allen Award, a stipend of $2,000 in addition to a research assistantship to an exceptionally qualified new student. Other major awards are the C.B. Tanner Agricultural Physics Award Fund and the Charles and Alice Ream Soil and Water Protection Research Fund, each providing funds for a half-time research assistantship per year for qualified students.
Admission
A good foundation in the basic sciences is essential for graduate study in soil science. The program requires all students to have successfully completed one semester of calculus for the M.S. degree and two semesters of calculus (differential and integral) for the Ph.D., one course in statistics, chemistry through quantitative analysis, and one year of physics. Admission with deficiencies is possible but is likely to delay completion of graduate studies.
The following materials must be submitted when applying to the program: an online application, official transcripts, Graduate Record Exam (GRE) scores, and three references. Because our graduate requirements presuppose extensive science course work, continuing undergraduate students are encouraged to select undergraduate courses carefully if they are considering advanced degrees in soil science.
For more information: Graduate Admissions, Department of Soil Science, 1525 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706-1299; 608-262-2633; fax 608-265-2595; cjduffy@wisc.edu; www.soils.wisc.edu.