PhD in Pathobiology

Program Description

The Pathobiology Graduate Program is an interdepartmental and interdisciplinary program with a mission to provide a broad based graduate education to students seeking a PhD degree in the areas of infectious and non-infectious diseases of animals, food safety, security, and policy, and production animal medicine and management. The research activities of the graduate faculty (http://www.vet.k-state.edu/education/dmp/graduate/faculty/), primarily in the Departments of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology and Clinical Sciences, are in specialized areas of Infectious Diseases, including Zoonotic Diseases and Transboundary Diseases, Bacteriology, Companion Animal Health, Comparative Biomedical Sciences, Cancer Biology and Treatment, Epidemiology, Food Animal Health and Management, Food Safety and Security, Immunology, and Translational Medicine. The graduate faculty in Pathobiology have established programmatic requirements, within the overall policies of the Graduate School, for supervision and completion of the degree and provide both the course instruction and the research training essential to complete the PhD degree. The program offers opportunities and encourages DVM students to concurrently work on a dual degree program (DVM/PhD).

Students Learning Outcomes

Students who have graduated with a Ph. D. degree in Pathobiology should be able to demonstrate:

  1. Abilities to formulate and design a hypothesis-driven research project (s), independently carry out the research methodology, critically analyze the data, and disseminate the research findings in the form of presentations at scientific meetings and peer-reviewed publications.
  2. Professional and technical expertise in their chosen areas of study or disciplines.
  3. Abilities to apply knowledge through critical thinking, to interpret or analyze and integrate information, to respond and adapt to changing situations, to make decisions, to solve problems, and to evaluate actions.
  4. Effective oral and written communication skills.