PROFESSIONAL MASTER OF SCIENCE IN
ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS AND DECISION MAKING

     The Environmental Analysis and Decision Making track of the Professional Master's Program at Rice 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 two management courses, one 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 as follows:

• 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 are free to choose from seven focus areas:  Sustainable Development, Management and Policy, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Fluid Dynamics and Transport, Engineering, and Advanced Computation.  At least three of a student's five electives should be chosen from one focus area.  

Faculty Involved in the Professional M.S. in Environmental Analysis and Decision Making Program include:

Katherine B. Ensor , Track Director (Statistics)
Dan Cohan, Track Advisor  (Civil & Environmental Engineering)
Qilin Li, Track Advisor (Civil & Environmental Engineering)
Evan H. Siemann, Track Advisor (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology)

Andrew R. Barron (Chemistry)
Philip B. Bedient (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
James B. Blackburn (Adjunct Faculty, Lecturer of Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Vicki L. Colvin (Chemistry)
Linda P. Driskill (Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication)
Matthias Heinkenschloss (Computational and Applied Mathematics)
Amy M. Jaffe (Baker Institute for Public Policy)
Kristen M. Kulinowski (Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology)
Kathleen S. Matthews (Dean of Natural Sciences)
Erzsebet Merenyi (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Dale S. Sawyer (Earth Science)
Tayfun E. Tezduyar (Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science)
Mason Tomson (Civil and Environmental Engineering)

Last updated 03/21/2008 Dagmar Beck