This seminar offers students an opportunity to explore environmental careers that are appropriate for students in environmental conservation, sustainability science, and related fields. We will meet weekly to work on the requested elements for the professional world after graduation, such as resumes, networking, mentoring, interview skills, and more. We will also examine top sectors and growing fields to help students in professional degree programs position themselves for their intended career.
- Teacher: Britt Crow-Miller
Perspectives on Sustainability is the foundational course introducing the field of sustainability science to graduate students at UMass Amherst. The course focuses on interdisciplinary aspects of the field, drawing on multiple disciplines to explore current societal challenges. The course provides a foundation in historical and modern thinking in the field; an introduction to sectors that are commonly pursued by sustainability professionals (food systems, water, energy, urban environment, transportation, waste systems); and training in skills that are necessary to be successful as a practitioner in the sustainability field. We will develop skills through several hands-on projects that build on one another throughout the semester, using real world examples in various sectors as the basis for our learning.
- Teacher: Britt Crow-Miller
Provides graduate students with a broad sampling of new and cutting-edge research related to environmental conservation to help foster critical thinking and provide a more expansive view of natural resources research. Seminars will be given by departmental faculty and faculty from other departments, both on campus and from other institutions. The seminars will be designed for both students who plan a research career and those who plan a more applied path. For the former, lecturers will include topics important for funding projects and publishing findings and for the latter, topics related to interpreting and applying results.
- Teacher: Brett Butler
Introduction to the research process in the natural resources sciences. Focus on research philosophy, concepts, and design, progressing from development of hypotheses, questions, and proposals, to grants and budgeting, and delivery of such research products as reports, publications, and presentations.
- Teacher: Allison Roy
This course provides students with an understanding of basic statistical concepts critical to the proper use and understanding of statistics in ecology and conservation science and prepares students for subsequent ECO courses in ecological modeling. The lecture (required for all ECO Master's level graduate students) covers foundational concepts in statistical modeling (emphasis is on conceptual underpinnings of statistics not methodology, with a focus on defining statistical models and the major inference paradigms in use today), basic study design concepts (emphasis is on confronting practical issues associated with real-world ecological study designs and statistical modeling), and lays out the 'landscape' of statistical methods for ecological modeling; emphasis is on the conceptual underpinnings of statistical modeling instead of methodology, with a focus on defining.
- Teacher: Tammy Wilson