The vice chair for graduate studies is the chief graduate advisor and heads a committee of faculty advisors who may serve as academic advisors. The research interests of the members of this committee span most of the major areas of statistics. During their first quarter in the program students are required to meet with an academic advisor who assists them in planning a reasonable course of study. In addition, the academic advisor is responsible for monitoring the student's degree progress and approving the study list each quarter. After the student identifies a thesis topic, the chair of the thesis committee becomes the student's academic advisor. Continuing students should meet with either the vice chair for graduate studies or their academic advisor at least once each quarter. Each year a committee consisting of all regular departmental faculty meet to evaluate the progress of all enrolled M.S. degree students. This committee decides if students are making satisfactory progress, and if not offers specific recommendations to correct the situation. For students who have begun thesis work, the determination of satisfactory progress is typically delegated to the academic advisor. Students who are found to be consistently performing unsatisfactorily may be recommended for termination by a vote of this committee. The strengths of current and prospective faculty dictate the specific fields of emphasis in the department: computational and computer-intensive statistics, applied multivariate analysis, bioinformatics, social statistics, computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, experimental design and environmental statistics.