Address Emerging Challenges in the Classroom and the Community

At the University of Arizona, our Environmental Science program is housed within the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science. Our department offers two Bachelor of Science degrees: Environmental Science and Sustainable Plant Systems. Both of these programs provide a rigorous science-based curriculum resulting in well-trained students with many career options.

Through classroom, lab and community projects, you will increase your ability to think critically, work on a team and approach environmental issues from an experiential, entrepreneurial perspective. You will learn to:

• Integrate concepts from biology, chemistry and physics to comprehend how different kinds of environments (e.g., agriculture, urban, forest, wetland) function as systems.
• Understand how environmental systems sustain climate, purify water, provide food and fiber, and remediate pollution.
• Properly collect soil, water and air samples, identify and implement appropriate analytical techniques, and interpret results.
• Create a hypothesis, design an experiment to test that hypothesis, analyze the results, and draw appropriate conclusions.
• Understand and describe the source and extent of current environmental pollution problems, and understand U.S. laws governing pollution and remediation.
• Integrate basic scientific principles involved in preventing soil and water degradation, and remediation of contaminated land and water.
• Understand factors governing fate and transport of water and contaminants in the soil and groundwater.
• Predict how landscapes change under the combined effects of climate, geology and land use.