Join Us

 Join us as a Graduate Student!

Prospective graduate students interested in Dr. Bowman’s lab should review her website and current research projects, as well as UC Davis’s Psychology program requirements.

UC Davis graduate Psychology program offers a collaborative environment, high-quality research, and the opportunity to hear guest speakers from across the UC system and from universities around the country and globe. In addition, professors and graduate students conduct interdisciplinary work at multiple research centers across campus, including the Center for Mind and Brain, the M.I.N.D. Institute, the Center for Neuroscience, and within the UC Davis Neuroscience Consortium.
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Graduate students in Psychology complete two years of coursework, a first-year project, a qualifying written exam after their second year, and a dissertation project. Five years of funding are guaranteed. For more information about program requirements, please see this page.
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Interested prospective graduate students are encouraged to contact Dr. Lindsay Bowman at lcbowman@ucdavis.edu.

UC Davis Psychology (and UC Davis broadly) is highly committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. You can read the BASC Lab’s commitment to DEI here.

Additional Tips for the UC Davis Psychology Graduate School Application Process

• Read the How to Apply webpage thoroughly
• Additionally, in your Statement of Purpose, consider the following prompts:
  1. What kinds of research questions are you interested in pursuing in your graduate studies?
     • ​​The idea here is to communicate what you are curious and passionate about exploring in graduate school. For example, what questions do you have about development/brain/cognition/social behavior/environmental influences/other topics relevant to the lab?
     • When forming these ideas, it can be useful to articulate your research interests as ‘research questions’ (i.e., starting with what, why, how etc.)
  2. How have your experiences (academic or otherwise) prepared you to succeed in graduate school?
  3. Why would Dr. Bowman’s BASC Lab be a good fit for you to pursue your research interests ​
     1. Fit with the mentor(s) is an important consideration. Be sure to express how you see your work fitting in with the expressed broad interests of the lab (e.g., about development, brain, cognition, social behavior, and/or environmental influences).
     2. Also note that UC Davis Psychology is highly collaborative, and thus fit with more than one select mentor is possible. But you should still be clear in how/why your interests align with the mentor(s) identified.
     3. Note that your research interests do not need to perfectly match current/prior research studies in lab—your interests may complement the work being done (while fitting in with the lab’s broad interests). Explain how your interests and/or experiences serve as this complement.

 Become an Undergraduate Research Assistant!

Are you interested in the development of infant and child social cognition and how the brain and environment shape this development? Our lab has multiple projects aimed at better understanding the development of the social brain and children’s social behavior!
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Our undergraduate researchers (RAs) play an important role in our research. RAs recruit families from the community and over the phone, run visits with children and families, video-code and enter data, analyze brain signals from EEG data, and have opportunities to earn course credit. Through volunteering in our lab, RAs have valuable opportunities to learn about EEG data, to analyze and interpret findings, and to think critically about research in our field! Students will collaborate with Dr. Bowman, graduate students, and one another as well as work independently. Undergraduates working on independent projects may also have the opportunity to present at the Undergraduate Research Conferences at UC Davis and/or to complete Honors Research projects.

To get the most out of their research experience, we request that research assistants commit to a minimum of 2 quarters working in the lab. We also have opportunities to help out in the lab over summer.

Interested research assistants should fill out our BASC Lab Undergraduate RA Interest Form and a member of the lab will be in touch with you as soon as possible.