Email list for transportation students

Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP) has a list announce transportation-related jobs, internships, scholarships, research assistantships, seminars, classes, meetings, field trips, events, lectures, conferences, social events and other opportunities. The volume of messages is not great, so please don't hesitate to join. That's where we'll send messages about events and jobs.

Funding

In response to questions from USP 697 students, try this list of potential sources of funding for dissertations and theses.

Field Area Projects

MURP students may choose to either prepare an original research paper or project in their field of specialization. The research paper or project is meant to demonstrate a student's ability to integrate and apply material from his or her course work and is designed in consultation with faculty. Students may register for 3-6 USP 510 Research credits for work on their FAP.

Click here for more information

Looking for Research Ideas?

The Bicycle Transportation Committee of the Transportation Research Board has a list of research ideas for students.

Notes to Prospective Students

If you are a prospective student and have questions about our graduate programs, curriculum, classes, etc., in the School of Urban Studies & Planning please first contact our Student Services Coordinator, Tracy Braden at tbraden@pdx.edu.

Prospective MURP students often ask me about opportunities to work with me on research. That's a difficult question to answer clearly. First of all, I often do not know too far ahead how many and what type of graduate research assistants (GRAs) I need. I am unlikely to know in the spring what I will need in the fall. That's the nature of many of the funding sources for my research. Second, I try to first hire PhD students, who are pursuing a research degree. It's important to remember that the MURP degree is a professional degree, aimed at preparing you to work professionally in the planning field, as opposed to the MUS or PhD degrees, which focus on research. Therefore, I tend to advise MURP students to focus more on internships during their two years in the program, rather than research assistantships (in addition to their coursework, of course). That being said, I have had many strong MURP students work for me as research assistants.

Prospective PhD students should e-mail and tell me about their background, experience and objectives. I encourage all prospective PhD students to think about and clearly articulate why they want to pursue a PhD. Too often I encounter masters students who really enjoy the topics they are studying and want to continue doing so and thus enter a PhD program. Simply wanting to continue learning about a topic isn't enough for pursuing a PhD. I also generally recommend that in the field of planning, students get some professional experience before pursuing the PhD.

Library Research

Are you looking for planning and transportation journals and other information? Here are some useful links:

PSU Research Survival Online: A Library Guide for PSU Students - A great place to start. There is a also link to a list of all the journals that are available full-text on-line through PSU.
TRID online database - TRID is a newly integrated database that combines the records from TRB's Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) Database and the OECD's Joint Transport Research Centre’s International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD)
Bureau of Transportation Statistics - A federal agency with lots of transportation data and free publications
PSU Library's On-Line Databases - From here you can search numerous databases to find journal and other articles. I suggest trying Academic Search Premiere, Article1st, Web of Knowledge, and Lexis Nexis. There is also a link to the Oregonian to search for old articles.

Need to know when and how to cite sources? click here

Updated November 2011