Master of Science - Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences

Washington State University's (WSU) Master of Science - Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences (ENRS) is an interdisciplinary program offering the flexibility for elective classes in the student’s desired area of specialization. Areas of focus typically include wildlife ecology and endangered species conservation; spatial and ecological relationships of plants and animals in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, in-stream physical and biological processes, and vertebrate and invertebrate ecology of wetland, lake, estuarine, and marine systems, modeling and dynamics of ecological and environmental systems, population ecology and modeling, sustainable resource management including water resources, private land management, and analysis of policy impacts and the human dimensions of resource conservation.

The Master of Science in ENRS offers a choice of two degree plans available at any WSU campus or Extension/Research Center where School of the Environment (SoE) graduate faculty are located.

The “Directed Studies” Plan is designed to provide maximum flexibility for faculty and graduate students to take advantage of the wide variety of disciplinary areas, campuses, and research centers included in SoE. This plan has minimal specific requirements (i.e. ,1 credit of SOE 501 Graduate Skills Seminar), so that it may be tailored to meet the needs of individual students, and take advantage of a wide variety of coursework from within and outside of SoE. Specific courses are selected in consultation with the thesis advisor and graduate committee.

The “Interdisciplinary” Plan requires students to choose courses within distinct content areas, in addition to the required graduate seminar, to provide a general and well-rounded program in environmental and natural resource sciences, with the intent of l increasing interdisciplinary understanding and building cohorts of graduate students.

In addition to the two plans, students may choose between the thesis and non-thesis option. For the thesis option, students complete a research project that results in a publishable product. Students selecting the non-thesis option will complete a smaller project and take more course credits.