Undergraduate Programs

The School of Earth, Environment and Society offers innovative teaching programs in Geology, Geography, and Environment & Sustainability.  Each of these areas is affiliated with other departments and centers across campus and the region where faculty and students have opportunities to share a wide range of interests in studying the Earth and people’s interaction with it. The strategic and leading role of the School is to maintain and enhance strong disciplinary and interdisciplinary programs, to promote the University’s national and international profile and to establish collaborative links with industry and entrepreneurs engaged in progressive sustainable initiatives.

Majors and Minors

Undergraduate programs are offered within three areas.  Please follow the links to find additional information.

• Environment & Sustainability facilitates a university-wide focus on the environment by supporting interdisciplinary approaches among faculty and students engaged in biological, physical, and social sciences. Environmental science encompasses important issues such as pollution and degradation of the environment related to human activities and impacts on biodiversity and sustainability. Enviromental policy brings together a unique mixture of skills and expertise to understand environmental issues through pragmatic policy solutions from administrative, legislative, and organizational viewpoints. These multidisciplinary fields have become increasingly important and continues to flourish as public awareness grows about the need for action in addressing environmental problems.
  BS Environmental Science (specializations: Sustainable Management, Restoration, Education & Interpretation, Watershed Management, Geospatial Analysis)
  BA Environmental Policy and Analysis (specializations: Sustainable Management, Restoration, Education & Interpretation, Environmental Law, International Perspectives)
  Minors: Environmental Science, Environmental Policy and Analysis, Sustainability
  
  
• Geography overlaps various disciplines and explores relationships among humans, society, places, and the environment. The features and characteristics of the Earth is the domain of the physical geographers, which includes fields such as weather and climate variations, landform formation, plant and animal distributions. Cultural geographers deal with specialties such as spatial variations among cultural groups, religions, languages, economies, governments, and other cultural convergence or differentiation issues that exist through space or time. The new frontier in geography is computerized mapping and data analysis known as geographic information science (GIScience), which adds significant weight to the interdisciplinary nature of this field.
  BA Geography
  Minors: Geography
  
  
• Geology provides an understanding of the history and processes that have shaped our planet through its 4.5 billion years. Geologists study the earth from its surface through its crust and deep into its mantle, focusing on outcroppings of rocks, cataclysmic earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, mountain and glacial processes, river flows and deposition of sediments, natural resources, and life from prehistoric times to today. Current geology trends feature the study of global environmental changes and consider the earth in a broad context that integrates atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere using geospatial sciences and multidisciplinary views.
  BS Geology (specializations: Hydrogeology, Paleobiology)
  BA Geology
  Minors: Geology, Paleobiology