Take the Next Step: The Anthropology M.A. at ECU

The Anthropology M.A. Program at ECU is designed to provide skills and experience that students need to succeed in multiple career paths. Whether students plan to continue their education through a PhD program or enter the workforce after graduating, our department has a proven track record of success. We’re particularly proud of our record of graduate job placement in cultural resource management firms, community agencies, development-based NGOs, and federal/state departments and agencies. Current strengths of our applied department include forensic anthropology, environmental anthropology (with focus on coastal regions), medical anthropology (rural health and global health promotion), primatology, demography and public health, Middle Eastern archaeology, and bioarchaeology.

The M.A. Curriculum

Students in the program complete core courses in multiple subfields, plus methods and research design courses. We work with several other departments to help our students achieve a course path tailored to their interests and reflective of contemporary multidisciplinary praxis. Students have the option of conducting thesis research, completing a professional internship, pursuing a non-thesis option, or completing requirements for teacher training. Our program is designed such that attentive students complete all degree requirements within two academic years.

Life in Anthropology at ECU

You’ll find our department to be collegial and our graduate student cohort active. GrANSO (the Graduate Anthropology Student Organization) provides opportunities for student engagement, as does a regular “Brown Bag” lunch series. Student mentoring is a key attribute of our M.A. Program. In addition to the support of a strong faculty mentor aligned with their area of interest, each student benefits from midterm review of progress, including discussion of optimal curriculum completion paths and career planning progress. Our annual student cohort is small (generally under a dozen students with varied ages and backgrounds) and regularly participates in the life of the department. (In fact, our graduate students helped edit this part of our website!) Many of our faculty members have designed their research with opportunities for active graduate student training and engagement in mind, and students from multiple subfields often work together in ways that would likely make Boas smile.

The anthropology department is located on ECU’s Main Campus in the Flanagan Building, which includes significant laboratory space for archaeology (the Phelps Archaeology Lab), bioarchaeology, and forensic work (both in-house and at the Brody Medical Center). Flanagan is also home to the ECU Anthropology Library and to ample space for student gathering and research.

Our location in Greenville, NC, is ideally situated between the city (Raleigh/Durham and the Research Triangle) and the Coast (Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, the Outer Banks). Our graduate students and faculty are always able to help with suggestions for good housing, restaurants, breweries and shopping, and you’ll find our faculty to be involved throughout the local community in environmental causes, animal welfare, historical organizations and museums, athletics, and more.

How to Apply

To be accepted to the program students must qualify for admission to both the graduate school and the department. Students should generally have a 3.0 GPA and we typically expect to see breadth of anthropology coursework such as a major or minor, but are happy to speak about possible exceptions for otherwise well-prepared students. We require at least 2 letters of recommendation, a writing sample, and a “statement of purpose” that gives us a strong and detailed sense of your specific goals in further anthropological study at ECU. These items are submitted electronically via the Online Application. (Sending them to the Anthropology Department will delay the processing of your application.)

While the application deadline is March 15, we strongly encourage earlier submissions. Application reviews begin in late January/early February. We understand that graduate school selection can be a question-filled process. Any email exchange or conversation we have helps us get to know you better, so please reach out to our Director of Graduate Studies (schachtr18@ecu.edu) or to a faculty member whose interests align with your own as your discernment process moves forward. It’s ok to let us know about you and your goals and to ask for our honest assessment of whether you should apply. We’d be delighted to learn of your interest in our program, and we’ll give you the best answers we can.

Please review the application information available on the Graduate School’s website, and do note that satisfaction of minimum requirements is not a guarantee of admission. Instead, as in most graduate programs, we look at our pool of qualified applicants each year and match student interests with faculty who are available to mentor graduate students – this ensures that each accepted student has solid mentorship. This process sometimes surprises applicants because it differs from the undergraduate admissions process, and it’s why we ask for a strong and detailed sense of your goals as you compose the statement of purpose in your application. Because it’s really hard to know in a given year if a particular program will have someone well-aligned with your goals who is taking on new advisees we always counsel students to invest in applications to multiple programs (even though we’re pretty partial to ours!). ECU’s graduate application fee is $75. Limited fee waivers are available.

Funding Your Degree

It’s important to us that the anthropology M.A. degree be highly accessible. As a result, most, but not all, ECU anthropology M.A. students are awarded assistantships valued at an amount that exceeds the reasonable annual in-state tuition charge. Amounts may vary depending on external grant funding. Most of our assistantships include 20 weekly hours of combined teaching (with faculty guidance) and research work. All teaching assistants have allocated office space in the department. First-year students from outside of NC are routinely granted tuition reductions to in-state rates (residency should be established to achieve in-state tuition in year two). We’re happy to answer any questions along the way, of course.

Graduate Faculty Research Programs

The following faculty members are accepting new M.A. students for the coming year. Feel welcome to reach out to them directly on the faculty page to discuss possible research.

Dr. Eric Bailey is an applied Cultural and Medical Anthropologist with a joint appointment in Public Health. One of his current research projects involves completing qualitative and quantitative data analyses on Phase II of a research project entitled, “Investigating Myths and Misconceptions along with the Mental and Physical Impact associated with COVID-19 among East Carolina University Students.”

Dr. Blakely Brooks works with Andean highlanders to identify sources of social stress related to negative health outcomes in local Andean communities. He has researched social stress as a risk factor for developing the cultural syndrome of susto. His most recent research is focused on women’s health, specifically cultural beliefs related to marianismo (the cultural belief of embracing characteristics of the Virgin Mary) and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy/guidelines in the Andean highlands of Peru and Eastern North Carolina.

Dr. Cindy Grace-McCaskey holds a joint research appointment with Anthropology and the Coastal Studies Institute and has active research projects studying coastal communities’ resilience and vulnerability to impacts from climate change.

Dr. James Loudon is accepting students interested in furthering their understanding of nonhuman primate behavioral ecology.  Any geographic region, primate species, or research topic that a potential student wants to pursue is fine. However, Professor Loudon’s expertise lies in studies examining the stable isotope ecology, nutritional ecology, and ethnoprimatology of long-tailed macaques, chimpanzees, several species of lemurs, and baboons.

Dr. Laura Mazow’s current research is a collaborative project to investigate the function of ancient bathtubs. Were they used for bathing, burial or woolen textile production? To answer this question, she is drawing from a number of different disciplines, including Archaeology, Classics, Chemistry, Textile Arts, Music, and History. There are a number of opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate student involvement in this project and she encourages anyone interested, particularly anyone with a background in one of the stated disciplines, to contact her.

Dr. Chad Morris is an applied medical anthropologist whose work is primarily focused in the Republic of Palau. He uses community-based prevention marketing to improve rates of cancer screening in Palau. He has worked with multiple Palauan agencies and individuals to establish the Palau Cancer Screening Task Force, which seeks to promote cultural change in process and perception of cancer screening. He welcomes M.A. students with similar interest in global or local health promotion.

Dr. Megan Perry conducts bioarchaeological research in Jordan and historical period North Carolina to explore diet, disease, and population mobility. She is particularly interested in the social and environmental determinants of health, disease, and mortality in past communities using isotopic, histological, and paleopathological methods.

Dr. Benjamin Saidel’s research focuses on nomadic groups, settlement patterns, and material culture. He uses historical and anthropological data to shed light on ancient and subrecent pastoral nomads. He also uses an interdisciplinary approach, blending ethnography and archaeology, to explore tribe-state relations in antiquity and in the recent past.

Dr. Ryan Schacht is actively recruiting graduate students generally interested in biocultural approaches to human health, reproductive decision-making, and violence. Current students are actively engaged in several research projects, including database construction and analyses targeting the social determinants of health as well as gender and race-based risk factors associated with sexual risk-taking and violence.

Dr. Christopher Wolfe is a biological anthropologist who applies robust statistical and computational methods to quantify skeletal growth and development and modern human variation. His work incorporates traditional skeletal resources as well as virtual mediums (radiographs, CT scans, etc.) to better understand human variation across diverse contexts. He has active research projects exploring the multivariate nature of human growth in the past and present, the evolution of the uniquely human growth trajectory, and statistical methodology in forensic anthropology. He accepts graduate students with a broad interest in forensic and/or biological anthropology. However, he is especially open to students who have an interest in novel methodological or statistical approaches in biological anthropology.