Getting a higher education from the Physics, Astronomy and Materials Science (PAMS) Department at Missouri State University (MSU) has been extremely advantageous to me, in a lot of ways. As I have obtained both my Bachelors and my Masters degrees here, I have had time to appreciate to a fuller extent what the faculty and programs in this department have to offer to a student who is willing to learn.

From the start, the first and most important aspect of the physics and materials science fields (and of anything in life really) – the hands on applications – was made available to me by professors who revealed themselves as mentors early on. This continued throughout my years at MSU. As I was learning theoretically about synthesis and characterization of polymers in class, I was also in the lab, physically learning to spin coat polyfluorene solutions as thin films. The process of learning is as complete in the PAMS Department as in any other highly accredited school.

The midsize of the PAMS department belies the amount of technological tools it possesses, and the remarkable expertise its faculty has. Equipment such as the pulsed laser deposition or the molecular beam epitaxy systems are easily available after training to anyone who wishes to have such experiences. As a result, while the atmosphere here is very jovial and warm, individuals (like me) leaving MSU with a degree (or two) from PAMS can be certain to have packed with them a highly competitive amount of skills, substantial enough to meet any demand in their future scholastic or industrial enterprises.

Receiving my education from the PAMS Department at MSU has been a challenge, yet a very rewarding one, which I would not trade for anything. I would not hesitate to recommend it wherever I go.

Lamine Fadiga.