ES&P Course of Study

Completing the ES&P Master’s degree requires completing 12 course units which includes one credit devoted to a final MA project. The 12 course units include five required core courses, two skills courses, and five elective courses. The five elective courses allow students flexibility to take courses that will best help them meet their objectives and strengthen areas that they would like to focus on.

We encourage students to take advantage of the diversity of courses offered throughout Clark University, and consider enrolling in courses offered in the other programs in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment, and in other departments (particularly geography, economics and biology) as approved by the student’s faculty advisor.

Required Core Courses (5)

The ES&P required courses include four core courses plus one required unit devoted to facilitating the completion of the final MA project. The core courses provide ES&P graduate students with a common academic foundation. Each of the four core ES&P faculty members teach a core course that all ES&P graduate students must take.

1. IDCE 363 Decision Methods for Environmental Management and Policy – Information on environmental impact assessments needs to be systematically organized and analyzed to be useful in the decision-making process.

2. IDCE 382 Management of Environmental Pollutants – Studies approaches to regulating hazardous chemicals in air, water, and food.

3. IDCE 30205 Climate Change, Energy and Development – This course explores the environment-energy challenge of development with a particular emphasis on climate change.

4. IDCE 30287 Fundamentals of Environmental Science – Covers the key scientific and technical topics and emphasizes quantitative skills of problem-solving.

5. IDCE 30300, ES&P Final Masters Project
All ES&P Masters students are required to register for one full unit of this course to facilitate completion of their final MA project. This course is taken with the student’s MA final project faculty mentor. Students have the option of registering for 0.5 credits for two semesters or 1.0 credit in one semester. This course is pass/fail, the grade designation for this credit will not be given until the student has completed and submitted their final MA project.

Required Skills Courses (2)

Note: This list is a sampling of skills courses, but students may request approval from their faculty advisor for other courses to be considered “skills” courses.

IDCE 332 Sustainable Development Assessment and Planning
IDCE 30209 Environmental Research Design and Development (half-unit course)
IDCE 305 Qualitative Research Methods: Skills and Application
IDCE 310 Raster Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
IDCE 324 Intermediate Quantitative Methods
IDCE 332 Environmental and Social Impacts Assessment
IDCE 349 Advanced Topics in Spatial Analysis
IDCE 357 Dynamic Environmental Modeling
IDCE 366 Principles of Negotiation and Mediation
IDCE 367 Quantitative Modeling
IDCE 371 Digital Image Processing
IDCE 396 Advanced Topics in GIS
IDCE 30218 Community Development Decision Making and Negotiation
IDCE 388 Vector Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
IDCE 30220 Advanced Remote Sensing

Required Elective Courses (5)

Elective courses provide students the flexibility of designing much of their coursework to suit their own needs and to provide depth in a chosen area of focus. Students may take courses offered by the other three graduate programs in IDCE (International Development and Social Change, Community Development and Planning, and/or Geographic Information Sciences for Development and Environment) or in other departments, as approved by their ES&P faculty advisor.

IDCE30288 Applied Ecology
IDCE30276 Environmental Law
IDCE30252 Corporate Environmental Management
EN341 Environmental Toxicology
IDCE30277 Sustainable Consumption and Production
IDCE30187 International Environmental Law and Policy
ECON257 Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
IDCE30270 Environment, Poverty and Health
IDCE380 Urban Ecology
IDCE30240 Community Planning Studio
IDCE30269 Raced Nature, Gendered Developments: The Political Economy of Environmental Conservation

Directed Study and Guided Internships: Students can take up to a total of two units of directed study or guided internships with a specific faculty member who agrees to guide the independent work (students may petition to take more than two units). So, in addition to the Final Project course requirement, students may opt to have an additional course of directed study or internship as an elective. To provide structure for working on the final project, students completing a professional project typically take one directed study or guided internship course, while students choosing the thesis option typically take two directed study courses.

Please view Clark's official Academic Catalog for a complete listing of course offerings.