Next, An MFA In Dioramas And A Certificate Of Fake Fur

Order your American Museum of Natural History fraternity paddle:

The American Museum of Natural History, which plays host to about 400,000 schoolchildren each year, is about to become a graduate school.

The New York State Board of Regents yesterday authorized the museum, on the West Side of Manhattan, to grant master’s degrees and Ph.D.’s in comparative biology, making it the first American museum with its own doctoral degree.

It expects to recruit students next year and enroll its first class in 2008.

. . .

Johanna Duncan-Poitier, deputy commissioner for higher education in New York State, said the museum was already “one of the world’s foremost centers of research and training in the natural sciences, the physical sciences and anthropology,” and clearly met state standards for doctoral-granting institutions.

About 30 students a year already conduct doctoral research at the museum through partnerships with Columbia, Cornell, New York University and the City University of New York. Its staff includes more than 200 scientists, some of whom will become the school’s faculty.

The program plans to accept four or five students a year — reaching a total enrollment of about 20 — who will receive tuition and a stipend. It has raised more than $50 million for the program, from the Gilder Foundation, the Hess Foundation, an anonymous museum trustee and New York City. It will be named the Richard Gilder Graduate School, for Richard Gilder, an investment manager and museum trustee who is one of the school’s major donors.

Location Scout: American Museum of Natural History.