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Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Degree Requirements

Graduate Degree Requirements

Graduate study in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences is designed to be flexible. Students plan their degrees in consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies and a supervisory committee. All entering graduate students are expected to have a background in undergraduate Earth science, supporting sciences, and mathematics. However, the department sometimes permits make-up work.

Requirements for the M.S.

Specific requirements:

  • 30 hours of graduate credit
  • A research thesis

The M.S. typically takes two years to complete. Students usually complete most of their coursework in the first year and spend summers and much of their second year completing the thesis.

Requirements for the Ph.D.

Specific requirements:

  • 72 credit hours of study, including 36 hours of coursework
  • The program may allow up to 24 hours of transfer credit, provided the credit is for relevant graduate coursework
  • Satisfactory completion of a qualifying exam
  • Production of original research in the form of a written dissertation
  • Satisfactory oral defense of the dissertation

The department provides full financial support for admitted Ph.D. students for five years. Ph.D. students typically complete most of their formal coursework during the first two years and focus primarily on research during their summers and subsequent years.

Graduate Courses

Almost all graduate courses in the department are open to both M.S. and Ph.D. students, and most do not require prerequisites. Instead, graduate students have the flexibility to craft a course of study that best fits their research interests, regardless of course number.

  • EES 5110: Global Climate Change. Science and policy of global climate change: history and causes of climate change in Earth’s past, with emphasis on the last 2 million years; evidence of human impacts on climate since 1850; future climate change and its economic, social, and ecological consequences; economic, technological, and public policy responses. No credit for students who have earned credit for 2110. [3]
  • EES 5220: Life Through Time. Ecology, classification, and evolution of important groups of fossils, emphasizing invertebrates. Change in marine ecosystems through geologic time. Causes and effects of rapid evolution events and mass extinctions. Three hours of lecture and one laboratory period per week. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3220 or 3220W. [4]
  • EES 5233: Conservation Biology. Ecological, evolutionary, social, and economic aspects of biodiversity loss and ecosystem disruption due to human activities. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, species overexploitation, and invasive species. Sustainable development, habitat restoration, and species reintroduction. [3]
  • EES 5238: Ecology. Population biology, evolutionary ecology, community structure, with emphasis on species interactions, including competition, predation, and symbiosis. No credit for students who have earned credit for 4238. [3]
  • EES 5250: Earth Materials. Solid materials that make up the earth; rock, soil, and sediment - with emphasis on the minerals that are their major constituents. Hand specimen, optical, and X-ray methods of description and identification. Physical and chemical processes that form and modify earth materials and the use of these materials in interpreting earth processes of the past and present. Field trips. Three lectures and one laboratory per week. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3250. [4]
  • EES 5260: Petrology. Nature, distribution, and theories of origin of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. Mineralogy as a function of rock-forming conditions. Laboratory emphasis on description and interpretation of rocks, using hand sample and microscope techniques. Field trips. Three lectures and one laboratory period per week. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3260. [4]
  • EES 5310: Global Climate Change. Scientific principles and policy applications. Earth’s past; evidence of human impact; future climate change; and economic, social, and ecological consequences. Economic, technological, and public policy responses. Repeat credit for 5110. Students who have earned credit for 5110 will earn only one credit hour. [4]
  • EES 5340: Structural Geology and Rock Mechanics. Principles of rock deformation; mechanics, fractures, folds, foliation, primary structures, applications of principles. Interactions and feedbacks between tectonics, climate, and erosion. Field trips. Two lectures and one laboratory period per week. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3340. [4]
  • EES 5420: Geomorphology. Analysis of the Earth’s landforms, their morphology, history, and the processes that form them. The building of relief and its subsequent transformation by geologic processes on hillslopes, rivers, coasts, wetlands, and glaciers. The natural history and human impacts on land forms. Field trips. Familiarity with basic physics (mechanics) is expected. No credit for students who have earned credit for 4420. [3]
  • EES 5440: Glacial Geology. Metamorphism of snow and ice; mass balance at snow and ice surfaces; and rheology of ice. Destruction and creation of landscapes by glacial movement and debris. Response of ice bodies to changes in climate; physical, chemical, and biological evidence of climate change; and methods of paleoclimate reconstruction. Glacial impacts on societies through sea-level, hazards, coastlines, and water supplies. [3]
  • EES 5510: Earth Systems Through Time. Effects of feedbacks between the geologic cycles on the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere at diverse intervals in the Earth’s history. Present and future implications. Interpretations of evidence recorded in Earth materials. Three hours of lecture and one laboratory per week. No credit for students who have earned credit for 2510. [4]
  • EES 5550: Transport Processes in Earth and Environmental Systems. Principles of conservation and constitutive transport laws; classic and emerging styles of modeling natural systems. Prior study of basic calculus (functions, derivatives, integrals) and physics (mechanics) is expected. No credit for students who have earned credit for 4550. [3]
  • EES 5600: Geochemistry. Application of chemistry to study the distribution and cycling of elements in the crust of the earth. Includes chemical bonding and crystallization, phase rules and phase diagrams, chemical equilibria, theories on the origin of elements, earth, ocean, atmosphere, and crust. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3600. [3]
  • EES 5650: Physics of the Climate System. Physical processes affecting the climate system. Global energy balance of Earth and planets. Surface temperature and how it is regulated. Electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with atmospheric gases, clouds, and aerosols. Ocean heat storage, cloud and precipitation processes, and the impact of sea and inland ice on temperature. Processes that govern the water and carbon cycle. No credit for students who have earned credit for 290-01 offered spring 2014 or spring 2015. [3]
  • EES 5680: Paleoclimates. Fluctuations in Earth’s climate with an emphasis on the past 700 million years. Forcings and feedback that influence climate and drive change. Techniques used to reconstruct past climate change using marine and terrestrial geologic deposits and geochronologic methods. No credit for students who have earned credit for 4680. [3]
  • EES 5760: Agent- and Individual-Based Computational Modeling. Applications in natural, social, and behavioral sciences and engineering. Graduate School / Courses 105 Designing, programming, and documenting models. Using models for experiments. Examples from environmental science, ecology, economics, urban planning, and medicine. Familiarity with basic statistics and proficiency in algebra are expected. [3]
  • EES 5820: Paleoecological Methods. Tools used to interpret past environments and climates, including plant microfossils, pollen and phytoliths, vertebrate morphology, and dental microwear and mesowear. Geochemical tools such as stable isotopes and rare earth elements. Integrating methods for paleontological and anthropological studies, including the use of databases and meta-analyses. Readings from primary sources. Serves as repeat credit for students who completed 390 section 4 in spring 2010. No credit for students who have earned credit for 4820. [3]
  • EES 5830: Volcanic Processes. Nature, behavior, and origin of volcanoes. Magmatic processes that lead to eruptions. Eruptive processes and volcano construction. Impacts of volcanism on Earth’s surface environment. No credit for students who have earned credit for 4830. [3]
  • EES 5841: Directed Study. Readings in related fields and/or laboratory research in pursuit of a scholarly project conceived and executed under the supervision of a faculty member. Open to senior majors and graduate students or by consent of the department chair. Does not count toward minimum requirements for the major. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic, but students may earn only up to 2 credits per semester of enrollment. [1-2]
  • EES 5842: Directed Study. Readings in related fields and/or laboratory research in pursuit of a scholarly project conceived and executed under the supervision of a faculty member. Open to senior majors and graduate students or by consent of the department chair. Does not count toward minimum requirements for the major. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic, but students may earn only up to 2 credits per semester of enrollment. [1-2]
  • EES 5851: Independent Study. Readings with related field and/or laboratory research in pursuit of a scholarly project conceived and executed under the supervision of a faculty member. Open to senior majors and graduate students. Other students must have consent of department chair. Does not count toward minimum requirements for the major. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic, but students may earn only up to 3 credits per semester of enrollment. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3851. [1-3]
  • EES 5852: Independent Study. Readings with related field and/or laboratory research in pursuit of a scholarly project conceived and executed under the supervision of a faculty member. Open to senior majors and graduate students. Other students must have consent of department chair. Does not count toward minimum requirements for the major. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic, but students may earn only up to 3 credits per semester of enrollment. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3852. [1-3]
  • EES 5891: Special Topics. Topics vary. May be repeated for credit more than once by permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3891. [3]
  • EES 5990: Mass Extinctions. Synthesizing causes, consequences, and dynamics of past mass extinction events. Using fossil records to interpret current and future trends in biodiversity loss. No credit for students who have earned credit for 3891-02 offered spring 2017 or spring 2018. [3]
  • EES 6100: Earth Fluids. Fluid dynamics in relation to natural Earth systems, including low and high Reynolds number flows. [3]
  • EES 6891: Special Topics and Advanced Techniques in Geology. May be repeated for credit more than once if there is no duplication in topic. Students may enroll in more than one section of this course each semester. [1-4]
  • EES 7110: Advanced Topics in Earth Materials. Selected topics in the structure, composition, properties of the materials that constitute the Earth, and the natural processes that control their stability and transformations. May be repeated for credit if there is no duplication in topic. [3]
  • EES 7300: Isotopes and the Environment. Isotope systems, research techniques and applications used to trace, date, and understand environmental processes on Earth’s surface. Stable, radiogenic, and cosmogenic isotope systems. Radiometric dating of low temperature processes. [3]
  • EES 7350: Magmatic Processes and the Construction of Earth's Crust. Generation of magma and its role in construction of Earth’s crust. Connection between magmatism and large-scale tectonics. Introduction to magmatic tracers: isotopes, trace elements, phase equilibria; geochronology; and the history of the crust, Hadean to present. [3]
  • EES 7380: Sedimentary Systems: Source-to-Sink. Generation and distribution of sediment from mountain tops to deep-sea basins. Construction of depositional landscapes and stratigraphy. Sediment dispersal and interactions between source-to-sink components along transport pathways; feedbacks with climate, tectonics, the biosphere, and humans. Earth system interactions, energy budgets, and nutrient and geochemical cycling. [3]
  • EES 7320: Macroecology and Biogeography. Integration of evolutionary biology, paleobiology, ecology, and biogeography to understand interactions between organisms and their environments over large spatial and temporal scales, including in ancient ecosystems. The discipline of macroecology; nature of species, niches, and communities; abundance and distribution of species; species diversity; composition and assembly of continental biotas; allometry and body size; evolutionary dynamics; methodological advances. [3]
  • EES 7640: Topics in Macroevolution. Evolutionary processes that operate on geological time scales. Evolutionary theory; systematics; speciation and extinction; evolutionary benefits of sexual reproduction; co-evolution; convergence; biogeography; and relevance of evolution to modern ecology and conservation. Effects of abiotic processes on the evolution of terrestrial and marine organisms. [3]
  • EES 7999: Master's Thesis Research. 
  • EES 8003: Graduate Teaching Practicum. Discussion of best teaching practices in weekly meeting with instructor. Application of teaching strategies via teaching undergraduate lab, discussion, or lecture. [0-1]
  • EES 8999: Non-Candidate Research. Research prior to entry into Ph.D. candidacy (completion of qualifying examination) and for special non-degree students. [Variable credit: 0-12]
  • EES 9999: Ph.D. Dissertation Research.