Build your understanding of ecosystems while exploring the social, economic, and political forces shaping sustainability. You’ll gain hands-on experience applying science to real-world environmental challenges and prepare for a career managing natural resources for current and future generations.

Explore how water moves through landscapes and how communities can manage freshwater resources sustainably. You’ll study water quantity and quality while gaining hands-on experience with watershed measurements, data analysis, modeling, water policy, and technical communication.

Concentrations

• Watershed Science
• Watershed Sustainability
• Watershed Data

Learn to manage the forests, rangelands, wildlife, soil, water and vegetation that support healthy ecosystems and communities. You’ll gain hands-on skills through an accredited program that prepares you to meet professional standards and pursue careers in forest and rangeland stewardship.

Concentrations

• Forest Management
• Forest Biology
• Forest Fire Science
• Rangeland Conservation and Management
• Rangeland and Forest Management

Restoration ecology addresses this century’s challenge of healing lands damaged by intensive human use and resource extraction such as mining, deforestation and land fragmentation. You’ll understand foundational ecological processes and be equipped with skills needed to restore the functions and aesthetics of damaged ecosystems.

You’ll become well versed in the biological, physical and ecological science foundation of restoration ecology for damaged forest and rangeland ecosystems. Practice repairing and renewing our natural areas using ecological processes and human intervention.

Natural Resources Management provides you with a broad understanding of just how interconnected our social, political, and ecological systems are. This knowledge empowers you to address natural resource conservation and management challenges through designing sustainable solutions. With theory and practice, you’ll be part of creating adaptive and resilient ecosystems amidst global scales of complexity and change.

An integrative approach in this major enables you to develop local natural resource solutions that are also applicable at global scales. You’ll discuss issues from individual citizen engagement in conservation all the way up to global climate change while exploring the intersection of science and management and becoming well versed in biological, physical and social sciences.

The Geology major constitutes a broad curriculum that allows students to obtain a sound academic and practical basis for professional geosciences careers. Common private and public-sector careers include water, energy, mineral and other natural resources, geological hazards, regulatory management, and education. The major also provides a solid background for subsequent graduate training in specialized fields that include economic geology, hydrology, geophysics, environmental geology, resources management, public policy, and many other areas.

The Geology curriculum provides a technical background within the broader framework of a liberal arts education. Emphasis is placed on integrating field studies in the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere with on-campus classroom and laboratory work. In addition to a solid core in geology, students complete substantial course work in math, the physical sciences, communications, and the liberal arts that lead to effective quantitative, decision making, and communications skills.

Students in the Conservation and Environmental degree program gain skills to see a conservation issue through the eyes of varied stakeholders, to understand perspectives of an issue that may be different than their own, and how to work effectively with others in order to collaboratively address environmental issues.

Students acquire the skills to envision a desired conservation outcome, and then design a plan and identify the steps needed to help that outcome come to fruition. The degree prepares students for a variety of jobs in conservation, with an emphasis on jobs that require strong interpersonal skills, leading others, and collaborating with people with diverse insights and opinions. These skills are transferable to a wide gamut of conservation jobs, such as an outdoor education instructor, park ranger for a protected area, or an associate with an environmental planning firm.

The major in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology begins with a strong dedication to the foundational coursework in areas of biology, calculus, chemistry, physics, and an introduction to wildlife biology. This foundation builds towards our more specific higher-level coursework and is designed to provide an excellent pathway for internships, wildlife and natural resource-related careers, and/or graduate studies and research. All of our concentrations require a 4-week summer course, which is held at the CSU Mountain Campus.

Common careers include private and public sector wildlife monitoring and management, consulting, wildlife biology, and research. The major also provides a solid background for work for non-profits such as The Nature Conservancy, government agencies, or environmental conservation education.