ALEC Ph.D. Application Requirements

• GRE (required):  GRE scores provide our faculty reviewers valuable information about your verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing skills. We only accept GRE scores that are valid per the GRE testing site.  Click here to view more information about GRE testing scores.  GRE waivers are only granted in rare circumstances (e.g. GRE is not available in your country of residence). If you would like to request a waiver, please email your request to the ALEC graduate support staff, Jennifer Greenlee, at jgreenlee2@unl.edu
• Curriculum Vitae or Resume (required):  Your vitae should include a complete account of your academic and professional history along with your community activities, service, accomplishments, and awards.
• Personal Statement (required):
  1. Describe 1 to 3 personal and professional goals or objectives, and how this degree will help you achieve them.
  2. Describe how your past experience (work, volunteer, research, etc.) provides you a context for studying in this field.
  3. Describe how your interests align with research, extension, and/or creative activity of each of the ALEC Graduate Faculty <need link> you list in the Faculty section of the application.
• Academic Research Experience (required):  As part of your application, our faculty would appreciate you sharing any specific experience you have engaging in research. Within the program, you will be engaging in social science research (leadership, education, and communication), and there are several types of experiences we would encourage you to highlight in this section of the application. Specifically, it would be helpful if you can share any of the following with us:
  • A list of your publications (if any). For each publication, please articulate your contributions (e.g., analyzed data wrote the literature review).
  • Any specific social science research you've conducted (by yourself or as part of a team, if in a team, please articulate your contributions specifically)
  • Any program/project evaluation experience you have
  • Quantitative research methods experience
  • Coursework or training in statistics and/or math
  • Any project (for class or work) where you engaged in data analysis (either quantitatively or qualitatively)
  • Experience engaging in life sciences (e.g., biology, animal science, plant science) and/or physical sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry) research
  • Qualitative research methods experience
  • Experience conducting interviews
  • Experience coding/analyzing audio, video, or written materials.

It is not expected that you have any and certainly not all these experiences, but we wanted to provide some examples to help you answer this question.

• Faculty (required):  Review current ALEC Graduate Faculty <need link>and their research areas. Please identify at least one and a maximum of three faculty members in this department with whom you would like to work. Also, address faculty interest alignment in your Personal Statement. Please pay close attention to ALEC Graduate Faculty who are accepting new students, as not all ALEC Graduate Faculty are accepting new students.
• Letters of Recommendation (required) (min 3; max 5):  One letter should speak to your capacity to be a successful student (e.g. from a faculty member); one letter should speak to your professional capacity (e.g. from a supervisor), the remaining letter can speak to anything you believe makes you an ideal candidate for our program (e.g. commitment to diversity and inclusion, research capacity, teaching and training experience).
• Writing Sample (required):  Please provide a writing sample that demonstrates your scholarly writing ability, for example a term paper, thesis, grant submission or published article.
• ALEC Assistantship Interest (optional):  The department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication (ALEC) has the privilege of providing graduate assistantships at the master’s and Ph.D. levels. ALEC graduate assistantships include a stipend, tuition remission, and partial health insurance. We review applications on a rolling basis, and to be eligible for an assistantship, you must be admitted to an ALEC graduate program (M.S. in Leadership Education or Ph.D. in Human Sciences with a Leadership Studies specialization).

Lindsay Hastings

Clifton Professor in Mentoring Research
lhastings2@unl.edu
402.472.8739