Master of Arts in Environmental Studies

The MA degree in Environmental Studies prepares students to address complex environmental problems using a highly interdisciplinary approach and significant student-faculty design of the course of study. Students gain proficiency in critical analysis, development, conservation, and management frameworks of environmental studies for careers in business, government, planning, consulting, teaching, and research.

Specializations

Areas of Faculty Expertise

Beginning upon arrival in the fall of their first year, each student works with their academic advisor to identify a thesis or project topic, specify research questions, and select methods to address those questions. Students should work with their faculty advisors as well to select the courses most appropriate to their educational goals. Coursework is essential to an academic master’s degree; we encourage students to use their coursework to add breadth, depth, and critical engagement to their developing expertise. Below are areas in which our faculty teach and have expertise, but students are encouraged to consider relevant courses from across campus. 

Environmental Policy, Politics, and Governance

Scholarship in this area emphasizes critical engagement with the roots of environmental controversies, environmental injustice, disaster vulnerability and the material impacts of natural resource use. It explores existing and emerging approaches to governance that bypass entrenched political disagreements to achieve equitable social and environmental outcomes.

Work in this area emphasizes environmental decision-making with particular focus on the ecological, economic, political, and social factors that affect environmental governance processes. Research methods in this area draw from the full range of the social sciences and include some that are more typical of the humanities. Typical methods include: interviewing, surveying, discourse analysis, statistical and geospatial analysis, policy analysis, case studies, and Q method.

Core faculty advisors include Kate Darby, Mark Neff, Rebekah Paci-Green, Xi Wang, and Cam Whitley.

Our faculty are engaged in scholarly work in the areas of:

• Environmental justice
• The roles of science in environmental controversies and decision making
• Environmental governance
• Disaster risk reduction
• Sustainable development
• Human dimensions of natural resource management
• Critical animal studies

Geography/GIS

Geography is the science of place and space. Environmental Geography links the social sciences and natural sciences, studying the relationships between human activity and natural systems. We draw on knowledge from many different fields of study to give us the big picture of how and why socio-ecological systems and cultural and natural landscapes interact over space and time. Geographers use quantitative, qualitative, and spatial analysis methods and techniques to explore geographical patterns and processes. Our program offers strong opportunities to develop skills in Geographic Information Science (GIS), remote sensing, and cartography.

Core faculty advisors include Andy Bach, Patrick Buckley, Aquila Flower, Francisco Laso, Michael Medler, David Rossiter, Laurie Trautman, and Xi Wang.

Geography faculty expertise and scholarship includes the fields of:

• Biogeography
• Climate change
• Economic geography
• Geographic Information Science
• Historical geography
• Long-term environmental change
• Political ecology
• Pyrogeography
• Salish Sea and US-Canada regional geography

Energy Policy

Scholarship in this area includes energy system transitions, stakeholder engagement, energy policy, innovation policy, and environmental politics/policy.

Core faculty advisors include Mark Neff, Imran Sheikh, Charles Barnhart, Froylan Sifuentes, and Xi Wang.

Our faculty are engaged in scholarly work in the areas of:

• Energy studies
• Energy efficiency
• Energy system transitions