TCU was home to 1,550 graduate students during the 2019-2020 academic year. Studying everything from school counseling to biophysics, they all have one thing in common: the desire to expand humanity’s knowledge by answering questions that may never have been posed before.

“If you have a master’s degree, if you have a PhD, people expect that you have a mastery of your field’s knowledge and that you can take it a step further,” said Floyd Wormley Jr., TCU’s associate provost for research and dean of graduate studies. “They expect to come to you with a problem that nobody else can solve and trust you to solve it.”

Graduate students may plan to become university professors or to transform industries outside of higher education. No matter, they must think beyond the ideas that experts in their field have already established. They must figure out what holes remain in humanity’s collective understanding of the world and know where to find information that will lead them to new answers.

Research — whether for a master’s thesis or a doctoral dissertation — is at the heart of most graduate programs. To illustrate the ideas they are exploring, TCU Magazine spoke with graduate students from across the university to ask why they pursue this mastery of knowledge and how they plan to change the world with these research tools.

Read the stories:

Elizabeth Theban’s Thesis Focuses on How “The Fox” Changed Art Criticism

Don Greenwood Explores How Social Workers Can Help Stop Human Trafficking

Sarah Wayer Seeks Ways to Strengthen Father-Child Bonds

Collin Yoxall’s Research Helps Advertisers Account for Social Media Fatigue

Whitney Roach Seeks Ways to Make Schools More Inclusive for Queer Students

Kristof Pota Manipulates Metals to Treat Alzheimer’s and Improve the MRI

Alessa Juarez Finds Responding to Mental Health Crises Requires Collaboration

Cecilia Hill Brings Awareness of Mexican American History to Fort Worth Schools