We are glad you have chosen to visit our program via our website. We hope that you will find it easy to navigate and most of all; we hope you will find it informative. It is our goal to provide an interdisciplinary program that will help you reach your career goals. In the Environmental Sciences PhD program, we endeavor to be more than just an academic program simply relaying information to students. Our interdisciplinary faculty teaches our graduate students the critical thinking necessary to solve "real world" problems.
In addition, our program focuses not only on the two available concentrations (Chemistry and Biology) but also environmental impacts on society and culture as well. For this reason, course work in agriculture, geology and sociology are included as core courses outside the selected concentration. This prepares graduates for the anticipated 21st century workforce as dictated by studies conducted by NSF and NAS. That might sound like a lot of courses, but if you have a Masters degree in either Biology or Chemistry, you can potentially complete your coursework in as little as 25 hrs and the program in as little as three years! The Environmental Sciences PhD degree at Tennessee Tech is a research degree requiring an orally defended dissertation.
In order to be an effective interdisciplinary scientist, it is essential to understand the impact of our human endeavors on the environments we inhabit. This allows us the ability to design an effective means of protecting human health and wildlife habitat in the future and it also gives us insight into a means of clean up due to the consequences of past neglect. Here at TTU, faculty in Environmental Sciences conduct research in a diverse array of research areas all of which, in one way or another, effect the environment in which we live and work. The interdisciplinary nature of our program allows the goals of essentially any environmental problem to be investigated. We hope you enjoy your visit!
