The American Museum of Natural History, one of the world’s leading scientific museums, will soon be awarding graduate degrees. According to today’s New York Times, the New York State Board of Regents on Monday authorized the museum to confer M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s in comparative biology, a field in which the museum’s holdings and research strengths make it a natural for a graduate program.
According to the Times, the museum will be the first in the United States with its own doctoral program. Its first graduate students will enroll in 2008, but it plans to accept only a handful; its peak enrollment will be about 20. Faculty members will be found, in part, among the 200 or so curators and researchers already on the museum’s staff.
