Earth and Planetary Sciences - Northwestern University

Earth and Planetary Sciences from Northwestern University is a Campus Master Geology degree that prepares you for a Science career. Among the leading programs conferring graduate degrees in geoscience, the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University offers students a unique educational experience. While the quality of scholarship favorably compares with the best graduate programs--from which most of the faculty hold their degrees--the size of the combined faculty and graduate student community amounts to a fraction of our sister institutions. With a ?think tank? model in mind, the department has worked to build critical faculty mass in two main areas of research: ? solid-Earth geophysics, highlighting the intersections between plate tectonics, seismology, and mineral physics, and sedimentary geology , focusing on the links between biogeochemistry and climate change. These choices reflect our departmental mission ?to pursue fundamental, leading edge research that makes important contributions to the most pressing geoscience questions of our day. Currently, much of our effort is directed towards understanding the driving forces of plate tectonics, the structure and composition of the upper mantle and lower crust, the causes and consequences of major earthquakes and tsunamis, the natural and anthropogenic causes of large scale perturbations in Earth?s biogeochemical cycles, and the nature of thresholds and feedbacks within the carbon cycle-climate system linkage. Our graduate program has long maintained a reputation for producing outstanding geoscientists and is specifically designed to train students for academic careers. As such, it blends an intensive research program with ample opportunities for teaching experience. Yet a portion of our graduates are also consistently successful in finding careers with energy companies or non-academic research labs. The department is currently engaged in construction of a highly innovative analytical facility that will integrate a series of labs into a unique interdisciplinary complex. The lab functions range from cluster computing for seismic tomography, to a high-pressure, high-tempertaure mineral physics and petrology component, to a lab with two isotope ratio mass spectrometers for the study of biogeochemical cycles, to a clean lab with thermal ionization mass spectrometry for research on radiogenic isotopes. Clearly, this is a very exciting time to be studying geoscience at Northwestern University! Departmental faculty, nationally and internationally respected in their fields, pursue a diverse set of research projects that include active data collection from localities spanning the globe as well as planetary science projects employing NASA data from moons and planets of our solar system. Specific locations of ongoing work include North America, South America, Africa, the Pacific Islands, China and Tibet, the Mediterranean Basin, the planets Mars and Venus, as well as the moons of Jupiter. Faculty members commonly develop new research projects in collaboration with graduate students and have been consistently successful in obtaining external funding for these projects. In addition, the department is able to support graduate student research with endowment funding. EPS enjoys an exceptionally collegial but intellectually rigorous atmosphere, a combination we believe is particularly valuable to students when they first enter the graduate program. View more details on Northwestern University . Ask your questions and apply online for this program or find other related Geology courses.