Earth and Environmental Sciences

Program Overview

This three-year undergraduate program in Earth and Environmental Sciences offers a modularized curriculum with a focus on interdisciplinary learning. Students engage in disciplinary education, core modules, and advanced specialization modules, complemented by internships, methods training, and community impact projects. The program fosters scientific methods training, societal responsibility awareness, and extra skills development, preparing graduates for careers in the field.

Program Outline

Outline:

• The three-year undergraduate program involves six semesters of study with a total of 180 ECTS credit points (CP).
• The program follows an innovative and student-centered modularization scheme - the 3C-Model - that groups the disciplinary content of the three study years according to overarching themes:
• Year 1: Broad offer in disciplinary education that builds on and extends the students’ entrance qualification with 45 CP from the CHOICE area, 15-30 CP from intended major; introductory modules to Earth and Environmental Sciences (15 CP), General Geoscience (15 CP).
• Year 2: In-depth, discipline-specific CORE modules (45 CP); Environmental Science (7.5 CP), Geochemistry of Igneous and Aqueous Systems (7.5 CP), Earth Data Science (7.5 CP), Oceanography (7.5 CP), Mineral, Metal and Water Resources (7.5 CP), Geophysical Remote Sensing (7.5 CP).
• Year 3: Major-specific advanced Specialization modules (15 CP); Advanced Oceanographic and Geological Field Lab (5 CP), Global Change and Systems Thinking (5 CP), Modelling of Earth System Data (5 CP), Current Topics in Earth and Environmental Science (5 CP); mandatory summer internship (15 CP); extended Bachelor thesis and seminar module.
• Students take a mandatory two-month internship of 15 CP, usually completed between years 2 and 3.
• Jacobs Track runs parallel to disciplinary modules, fostering interdisciplinary approach, scientific methods training, societal responsibility awareness, extra skills.
• Methods/Skills modules (20 CP); Mathematical Concepts for the Sciences (5 CP), Chemistry for Natural Scientists (5 CP), Physics for Natural Scientists (5 CP), one Methods Modules freely chosen.
• Big Questions modules (10 CP) problem-solving oriented, addressing global challenges from interdisciplinary perspectives.
• Community Impact Project module (5 CP).
• Language modules (4 courses).