Environmental Council

The Environmental Council coordinates and supports programs of research, teaching, and public service in areas related to environmental quality. Although the council does not offer degree programs, it coordinates with departments across campus for undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on environmental subjects and provides opportunities for students working within specific disciplines to participate in interdisciplinary environmental research.

The council’s close ties with many other campus units make it possible for students seeking graduate degrees from those units to engage in environmental research within the council’s varied interdisciplinary programs. Current scholarly research coordinated by the council addresses a wide range of significant environmental problem areas, including environmental toxicology, environmental mutagens and carcinogens, water quality and water resources management, effects of pollution on biological systems, environmental chemistry, social and economic impacts of resource development, methods of environmental risk assessment, analysis of environmental perception and decision making, economics of environmental regulation, and environmental quality management.

The council supports five graduate research and study programs: Interdisciplinary Environmental Toxicology, Human Dimensions of Environmental Systems (HDES), the program in Environmental and Resource Economics (pERE), the Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (PEEB), and Applied Earth Systems Science (AESS). Financial support is available. Brochures describing the programs and the requirements for admission are available from the Environmental Council.