"Environmental consulting companies seek to hire motivated individuals with a solid background in applying quantitative skills to solve and prevent environmental problems. In addition, as consultants, these individuals need to be able to communicate effectively and have a keen sense of management and business practices. Graduates from Rice University's Professional Master's Program in Environmental Analysis will possess these qualities and be a tremendous asset to us and others in our field."
– Chuck Newell, Vice President, Groundwater Services, Inc.
Environmental Analysis is geared to teach students rigorous methods that are needed by industrial and governmental organizations to deal with environmental issues. It is a cross-disciplinary effort incorporating courses from environmental science, earth science, statistics, chemistry, ecology, and evolutionary biology, mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, chemical engineering, economics, computer science, and sociology. Graduates will be prepared with skills and knowledge valuable to environmental consulting firms, energy production companies, and government agencies. In addition to track courses, the students will take a management course, a policy and ethics course, and a seminar jointly with the students involved in the other Professional Master's Program tracks.
The objectives of this interdisciplinary degree are:
To teach quantitative skills such as statistics, remote sensing, data analysis, and modeling.
To teach laboratory and computer skills.
To give students the ability to anticipate problems, not just solve them.
Students can choose from three focus areas: Environmental Sustainability, Management and Policy, and Quantitative Decision Making.
Internship
An internship under the guidance of a hosting company, government agency, or national laboratory. A summary of the internship project is required in both oral and written form as part of the Professional Master’s Seminar.
Program Track Electives
Students will choose 21 credit hours elective courses from the following three focus areas and satisfy the following requirements:
one course (3 credits) from each of EBIO, CEVE, and STAT i.e. total of 9 credits,
one course (3 credits) from the Management and Policy focus area,
three courses (9 credits) from one focus area.
Recommended courses include, but are not limited to, the following:
Environmental Sustainability
CEVE 507: Energy and the Environment
CEVE 501: Chemistry for Environmental Engineering and Science
CEVE 509: Hydrology and Watershed Analysis
CEVE 502: Sustainable Design
CEVE 508: Introduction to Air Pollution Control
CEVE 511: Atmospheric Processes
CEVE 512: Hydrologic Design Lab
CEVE 520: Environmental Remediation and Restoration
CEVE 534: Fate and Transport of Contaminants in the Environment
CEVE 536: Environmental Biotechnology and Bioremediation
CEVE 550: Environmental Organic Chemistry
EBIO 523: Conservation Biology / EBIO 524 Conservation Biology Lab
EBIO 525: Ecology
EBIO 563: Current Topics in Ecology
EBIO 566: Applied Psychology
EBIO 336: Plant Diversity
EBIO 540 Global Biochemical Cycles
EBIO 568: Current Topics in Conservation Biology
EBIO 579: Core course in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
EBIO 580 Sustainability Development and Reporting
ESCI 424: Earth Science and the Environment
ESCI 618: Quantitative Hydrogeology
ESCI 650: Remote Sensing
ESCI 654: Geographic Information Science
POST 411: Integrated Approach to Sustainability
STAT 684: Environmental Risk Assessment and Human Health
Management and Policy
CEVE 505: Engineering Project Management and Ethics
CEVE 528: Engineering Economics
CEVE 529: Ethics and Engineering Leadership
ESCI 617: Petroleum Industry Economics and Management
ECON 437: Energy Economics
ECON 480: Environmental Economics
MGMT 609: Managing in a Carbon-Constrained World
MGMT 610: Fundamentals of the Energy Industry
MGMT 661: International Business Law
MGMT 674: Production and Operations Management
MGMT 676: Social Enterprise
MGMT 721: General Business Law
POST 501: Energy Policy
Quantitative Decision Making
EBIO 538: Design and Analysis of Biological Experiments
CEVE 313: Uncertainty and Risk in Urban Infrastructures
CEVE 528: Engineering Economics
ESCI 650: Remote Sensing
ESCI 654: Geographic Information Science
ECON 480: Environmental Economics
STAT 312: Probability and Statistics for Civil and Environmental Engineers
STAT 605: Statistical Computing
STAT 615: Introduction to Linear Models
STAT 553: Biostatistics
STAT 606: SAS Statistical Programming
STAT 684: Environmental Risk Assessment and Human Health
NOTE: Each of these courses is not offered every year, and some courses may have pre-requisites that require instructor permission.
The General Announcements (GA) is the official Rice curriculum. In the event that there is a discrepancy between the GA and any other websites or publications, the GA shall prevail as the authoritative source.