School of Arts and Sciences
Department of Earth and Climate Sciences

FAQs for Undergraduates

  • Click here to subscribe to our email list!

    Subscribe

  • The Earth and climate sciences are an interdisciplinary exploration of the dynamic processes that formed and continuously modify the Earth and other planetary bodies. We study earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciers, climate, fossils, groundwater, Earth’s crustal rocks, and even other planets in an effort to understand complex, interconnected planetary systems.

    More Information

  • The ECS department and the ENVS program are distinct, but complementary.

    ECS is a natural science field that focuses on how the Earth works - integrating and applying physics, chemistry, and biology to the climate, oceans, and solid Earth beneath our feet. ECS relies on a grounded scientific background utilizing scientific observation, fieldwork and lab analyses, and mathematical/physical modeling to decipher the governing mechanisms of the Earth system.

    ENVS is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the relationship between humans and the Earth, integrating communication, policy, justice, and ethics with an emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility. ENVS relies on datasets coming from the natural sciences that are then combined with social sciences such as economics, sociology, political science, and law to suggest better pathways for human interactions within the Earth system.

    If you are interested in both, you can do both! We recommend coupling the ECS Earth Science or Climate Science major with a co-major in ENVS. Feel free to reach out to any ECS faculty if you have additional questions.

  • All students interested in majoring or minoring in our department need to take: 

    • ECS 1: Intro to the Earth, Resources, and Environments)
    • ECS 2: Lab for Intro to the Earth, Resources, and Environments - can be taken concurrently or separately from ECS 1
    • ECS 3: Intro to Climate Science

    Once you have completed these courses, you have the prerequisites for most of our upper level courses. (You also would have satisfied the Natural Sciences distribution requirement for graduation.) The lecture classes for ECS 1 and 3 are typically our large courses, enrolling 50-150 students, while the ECS 2 lab sections typically have 5-20 students. The lab course of ECS 2 complements and supplements ECS 1, and include numerous demonstrations, working models, experimental activities, and several field trips.

    Our upper level courses are small. There are usually fewer than 20 students enrolled, and the faculty members get to know the students well. Many of these courses have labs in which you undertake projects, prepare reports, work with samples, or gather data from experiments. There may also be homework problem sets for the course. We encourage students to work cooperatively in these courses (though each is responsible for his or her own work), and this promotes a very friendly atmosphere among our students. 

    We have high, but realistic expectations of our students. We provide support, advice, nudging, and encouragement. We expect students to work hard in our courses, and to supplement their ECS courses with the supporting sciences of chemistry, physics, and mathematics to get the most out of their education and to prepare for graduate school or a career. Our faculty are committed to teaching, and take our mission to educate our students very seriously.

    More information about our department: 

  • Since the Earth and climate sciences are such visual and experiential fields, we ensure that there are ways for students to explore these topics in the field as well as in the lab. Most of our courses have some component of field work. There are afternoon field trips during lab periods for our introductory courses and some upper level courses. In the upper level courses, there may also be field trips on weekends from 1 to 3 days in length.

    We offer optional extended field trips for our majors. In alternate years, we may offer 7-10 day field trips to the Southwestern United States to visit spectacular geologic sites. Destinations have included Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park, Zion National Park, Delicate Arch, and more! With the growth of the department to include ocean and climate science, we hope to expand our field trip sites. 

    In addition, the faculty welcome students to participate in their research. Faculty with grants may be able to fund student research on their projects over the summer, and such work often has led to a senior thesis during a student's last year at Tufts. For example, Prof. (Emeritus) Jack Ridge had several students work with him on an NSF-funded project to study glacial lakes that formed at the end of the last ice age, and students completed senior theses based on their work. Another student worked with a previous faculty member on trace fossils in sedimentary rocks that are about 310 million years old, near Attleboro in southern Massachusetts. Trace fossils are the impressions or traces that organisms make as they live on and in sediment – tracks, trails, burrows, etc. The student and their advisor discovered the impression of a winged insect that is the oldest of its kind.

    If you have the background and motivation to participate in such projects, our faculty are very enthusiastic about including students in their work. Most often, students are at least in their junior year by the time they get involved in research, so they would have enough background to do meaningful work.

    More information about research opportunities: 

  • Our students have moved into a wide array of fields following graduation. Many go to graduate school for an advanced degree - a Masters degree is useful in many employment sectors and some career tracks require a PhD, especially if you want to go into university teaching or a position in a research lab. Students often work for a year - or a few years - before returning to school for an MS or a PhD. Those who continue to graduate school specialize in one of the many fields in the Earth and climate sciences such as groundwater and surface water hydrology, river restoration, volcanology, paleontology, climatology, oceanography, geophysics, and many more. 

    Regardless of your degree, careers in the Earth and climate sciences span a range of fields - check out this infographic from The Geological Society of London. Graduates have gone directly to employment in the environmental sector, mineral and energy resources, government, environmental management and research, and nonprofits. Our graduates have had successful careers in academic, at agencies like NASA, NOAA, USGS, and EPA, and many are employed in private industries. Others are elementary and high school science teachers, some are attorneys and doctors and more! 

    The Employment Sectors charts created by the American Geological Institute (AGI) show the general fields that people with a Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in geology have gone into, as of 2021. The AGI maintains an interesting website featuring people in specific geology-related jobs as well as a lot of links to companies who hire geologists. Visit the careers guide at AGI for much more information about careers in Earth sciences and check out the resources linked on our Career Resources and Employment Opportunities page. 

    In some careers, it can be helpful to have a double major or at least have taken extra courses in another field. However, we emphasize that it is more important to have a solid major in ECS with depth and breadth rather than 2 majors where neither of them is exceptionally strong.

    Some of our students pursue careers outside the geosciences. We hear from them that regardless of where they ended up they have used valuable skills and analytical ways of thinking that they developed in their ECS major. 

    More information about careers