ESE Curriculum & Courses
Ecological Sciences and Engineering
ESE Requirements and Courses
In addition to ESE course requirements, students need to meet specific course requirements set by their associated academic department. These courses still count toward the overall credit requirements for the degree.
mS NON-Thesis
Master’s Non-Thesis
- 32 minimum coursework credits
mS Thesis
Master’s Thesis
- 24 minimum coursework credits
- 6 minimum thesis research hours
PhD
Doctoral Degree
- A total of 90 credits is required by OGSPS. The distribution between coursework credits and research credits varies across academic departments and is dependent upon your degree granting department but will always work to reach the total of 90 credits.
- Up to 30 coursework credits from a previous master’s degree can be credited towards your PhD upon review by your faculty advisor/committee, but also is dependent upon your degree granting department.
ESE Colloquium/Seminar
- Minimum of 3 credits of the ESE Colloquium/Seminar I and II.
- Required to be taken in sequence, fall and spring semesters, during the first year of enrollment.
Ecology and Biology
- All ESE students need a baseline knowledge of Ecology/Biology.
- One course cannot count for two areas of required courses in ESE.
- If you have a background or prior degree in Ecology and/or Biology please discuss options with the Program Specialist.
- Minimum of 3 credits.
Policy, Economics, Human Dimensions, & Analysis
- This section encompassed Environmental Policy, Economics, Human Dimensions, and/or Institutional Analysis.
- One course cannot count for two areas of required courses in ESE.
- Minimum of 3 credits.
Responsible Conduct in Research
- GRAD 612 or comparable course offered by department, 1 credit.
- This course should be taken within the first year of the graduate program.
ESE Core Areas
- One course from two different ESE Core Areas for a minimum of 6 credits.
- One course cannot count for two areas of required courses in ESE.
– Core Areas
- Professional Development is not required, but strongly encouraged. There are several professional development courses that may be of interest and relevant to your unique research area. Additional options include planning the annual ESE Symposium, grant writing, teaching certifications, and experiential field trips. Such courses can be identified with the help of your advisory committee.
- Participating in summer session courses or a summer internship experience is recommended for all ESE students. It’s recommended for students to take one of these options within the first year of study, as this follows the completion of the ESE colloquium series, which is taken by all incoming ESE students.
ESE Course Listings
The following areas will provide a list of actively offered courses in which students can select the course they wish to take in order to fulfill that specific ESE requirement. Once a course is no longer offer, they will be moved to the archived course section. If a student locates a course they are interested in taking and believe it would fit one of the below areas, the student may email the syllabus to the Program Specialist as ESE does approve course substitutions on a case by case basis.
Archived Course Listings
The following section is the Archived Course listing which includes courses that were previously approved for ESE course requirements, but are not being offered at this time by the University. If one of these courses has been taken during the student’s graduate enrollment with a satisfactory grade then it will still count as fulfilling that specific ESE requirement.
BIOL 60000 Bioenergetics
EEE 59500 Urban Ecosystem Services
AGEC 60800 Benefit-Cost Analysis
ANTH 62000 Political Ecology
FNR 59800 Climate Policy: Global to Local
POL 52300 Environmental Politics and Public Policy
ABE 59000 Water, Technology and Society
CE 59700 Global Sustainable Engineering
EEE 43000 Industrial Ecology and Life Cycle Analysis
AGRY 59800 Greenhouse and Measurement of Gas
AGRY 65000 Clay Mineralogy
CE 44300 Introductory Environmental Fluid Mechanics
CE 54200 Hydrology
AGRY 55300 Intro to SAS for Statistical Analysis
CE 55900 Water Quality Modeling
EAPS 53500 Atmospheric Observations and Measurements
EAPS 59100 Climate Time Series Analysis
ENTM 69200 Experimentation and Analysis
FNR 53500 Forest Regeneration and Restoration
FNR 64700 Quantitative Methods for Ecologists
ME 59700 Innovation and Problem Solving
ME 59700 Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Five Theme Areas of ESE
ESE theme areas help students focus their studies and research within key environmental topics, fostering depth, collaboration, and interdisciplinary understanding.
Observe the dynamics of earth systems interactions through climate, hydrologic, and land use systems study at landscape to global scales. Earth systems research often requires the use of spatially explicit data and capabilities such as remote sensing from space-based, airborne, or UAV platforms and geographic information systems combined with modeling in ways that address policy at relevant scales. Study of the earth system may involve historical analysis and forecasts of earth system interactions across years, decades or millennia via simulation models which may need to be implemented on supercomputers.
Innovate changes in daily life through materials production, product/system design, and system realization to provide a healthy quality of life without compromising the ecosystem, human health, or the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Approaches for greening technological systems include life cycle assessment, source reduction, resilience engineering, material flow analysis, and responsible decision making which can simultaneously promote economic development and environmental stewardship. Green technology challenges include new means of generating and evaluating energy and energy efficiency, environmentally friendly and energy-efficient buildings/building materials, chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate use and generation of hazardous substances, energy efficient manufacturing processes, and green nanotechnology.
Both deliberate and inadvertent human practices have led to negative or unintended consequences on health and natural resources including water quality, quantity, and movement, soil health, air quality, and biodiversity. Biosphere studies involve geology, ecology, soils, atmospheric processes and climate, hydrological sciences, and biogeochemistry. Impacts of current concern include climate change, endocrine disruption, human health, and water wars.
Design urban communities that provide a high-quality lifestyle that meets the needs of more people with a reduced carbon and ecological footprint. Ecologically friendly and healthy urban environments require integration of innovative multi-functional energy efficient buildings, healthy personal and public transportation systems, appropriate accessible green space, integration of local food systems, and incorporation of the natural environment into interior and exterior living space. Sustainable urban ecosystems foster physical and mental well-being, individual economic prosperity, more efficient per capita consumption of water and energy, a higher return on public investment in municipal infrastructure and more opportunities for development of creative and ecologically responsible non-renewable materials cycling and natural resource utilization.
Apply cross-disciplinary approaches to ecological and environmental assessment and management of complex ecosystems including agriculturally dominant landscapes, forests, wetlands, conservation lands and refugees. The focus is on understanding process dynamics in open systems with spatio-temporal variation in the intrinsically coupled biological, physical, and social processes. Examples of current areas of importance are environmental and socio-economic consequences of intensive land use for bioenergy production, adaptation to climate change and its impacts on human and ecosystem health, carbon cycling and sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems, mitigation strategies for degraded wetlands, and ecological restoration of riverine and prairie systems within managed ecosystems.
