Biological and Environmental Sciences
Environmental and Earth Sciences
Curriculum
This graduate research group focuses on the history, function, and condition of earth’s environments from local to global scales. Faculty research interests encompass all aspects of the natural sciences including geology, biogeochemistry, hydrology, soil science, assessment of biodiversity, microbial ecology, and global change. Most of this research uses combinations of geospatial data technologies, computer modeling, state-of-the-art analytical instruments, and field investigations to advance our knowledge of earth processes and the management of water resources, shorelines, wetlands, and terrestrial landscapes to sustain healthy environments and to rehabilitate and restore damaged environments.
Core courses: All students are expected to take the following 2 credits of core coursework (the student’s committee may require additional courses as appropriate):
Graduate Seminar, 1 credit for each seminar, 2 seminars required: Graduate students provide one talk on their proposed research in the early phase of their careers and one talk on their research results in a later phase. This creates an active student body knowledgeable about their peers’ research, and fosters collegiality among the student body and mentoring of younger grads by senior grads. Students must take this twice for credit (i.e., two presentations are required), but are required to attend the seminar each semester when in residence at URI.
Summary of proposed credit structure: All students are expected to take 2 credits of Grad seminar. For MSc and PhD students this leaves 16+ credits for other courses.
*MSc students are required to take 6-9 research credits; the remaining credits can be taken as Special Problems course(s) or additional coursework. Note that current URI Graduate School policy (Section 7.44.1 of Graduate Manual) states that MSc students can take a maximum of 9 thesis research (599) credits, whereas for PhD students there is no maximum number of the thesis research (699) credits.
**Coursework for PhD students is decided in close consultation with the student’s PhD committee and with careful consideration of past coursework completed and the student’s career goals. PhD students with a MSc degree can transfer 30 credits from their MSc program and thus must complete at least 42 credits at URI. PhD students without a MSc degree may be allowed to transfer up to 20% of credits (e.g., 15 credits for a 72 credit program) from another institution but restrictions apply (see Section 7.50-54 of Graduate Manual for details). The required 18 course credits is pertinent to all BES PhD students and can be satisfied by transfer course credits with approval of the student’s PhD committee.
Note: Graduate Certificate in GIS and Remote Sensing (15 credits) is available for EVES students. GIS and remote sensing classes can be used to concurrently fulfill the course requirements for a certificate and the MS/PhD degree.