Master's degrees require a minimum of 30 credits. These are courses required as part of the 30 minimum credits, other courses are chosen in consultation with your faculty advisor:

• NFS 350: Nutrition and Food Sciences Seminar (1 credit): Weekly meetings focused on research presentations and critiques within the department.
• NFS 362: Intro to Research Methods (3 credits): Basic introduction to research methods at the MS level, including formulation of a research question and hypothesis, literature searching and preparation of a literature review, analytical methods and experimental design, data analysis and presentation, and journal article publication.
• NFS 390: Master's Thesis Research (6-15 credits): work with your thesis faculty advisor to determine credits.
• Stat 211: Statistical Methods 1 (3 credits): Fundamental concepts for data analysis and experimental design.
• Comprehensive Examination: A written and/or oral comprehensive examination (decided up on by your thesis faculty advisor and thesis committee members).
• Research and Thesis: Original research (and a written summary of it) conducted under the supervision of your faculty advisor. (Most graduate students also submit their thesis results, usually in condensed form to scholarly journals for publication consideration).
• Thesis Defense: After presenting your thesis research findings at a public seminar open to the college community, a thesis defense committee (three University of Vermont graduate faculty members, one outside of the department) engage the graduate student in an oral defense of the thesis.

*Students must maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher per semester as well as cumulative.

Graduate assistantships in NFS are 12 months and include:

• A yearly stipend, the amount is determined annually
• A tuition scholarship: 9 credits in the fall semester, 9 credits in the spring semester and 5 credits in the summer term.
• Health Insurance Stipend: 100% of the Single Student Health Insurance Premium.
• Effort Expectation: 20 hours per week for full-time students
  • GTRA: 10 hours per week as Research Assistant and 10 hours per week as a Teaching Assistant
  • RA: 20 hours per week as a Research Assistant

• Graduate students offered GTRA assistantships will be assigned 10 hours per week as a Research Assistant with their faculty advisor and 10 hours per week as a Teaching Assistant in one or more NFS courses. The TA course assignments are decided before the begining of each semester by the department Chair.
• Graduate students offered a Research Assistantship will spend their 20 hours of time committment working on research with their faculty advisor.

Yes if...

• You are interested in pursuing research in nutrition and food science and
• You have an undergraduate degree in nutrition, dietetics, food science or another science (such as biology or chemistry) and
• You have taken an undergraduate course in biochemistry, which has organic chemistry as a prerequisite.
• A TOEFL: minumum score of 90 to be considered for admission; 100 or above is required for a funded assistantship.
• GRE: NOT required

Interested individuals whose educational and/or professional experiences are not directly related to nutrition and food science are welcomed, too, but need to complete at least one semester of undergraduate-level biochemistry, which has organic chemistry as a prerequisite, before applying.

Upon completion of the M. S. degree, students will be able to:

• Exhibit the ability to conduct and defend a scientifically valid project to advance the field of knowledge in nutrition and/or food sciences
• Demonstrate oral and written communication skills designed to disseminate nutrition or food sciences research findings
• Think critically to evaluate current research in specific scientific areas related to the fields of nutrition and / or food sciences
• Exhibit the ability to transition to research, government or non-profit related employment

• PhD student at UC Davis
• Extension Educator, Louisiana State University
• Research Assistant, Vermont Lung Center
• Health Analyst, Vermont Department of Health
• Extension EFNEP Coordinator, University of Vermont
• Product Development Scientist, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
• Diabetes Educator
• Dealer.com