Environmental Studies

Welcome everyone. We're going to get started shortly. We're just gonna allow some more time to allow more people to come in and join us in today's session.

But feel free to put in the chat, introduce yourself. Feel free to put in the chat where you're visiting from. That way we can make connection.

I guess we can go ahead and get started.

Hello everyone. Welcome to this session. My name is Ben Webb. I'm an admissions counselor here at the University of Illinois Springfield and part of the admissions team. Before we get started with the presentation, there are a few housekeeping things that I do want to go over. So just so that you're all aware, this webinar is being recorded. So there is no need to take like frantic notes or anything like that because it will be made available at a later date. And within your shared screen setting, you will see an option for closed captions if you need that.

It will be in the right hand corner, the little CC button that's up at the top and you can also make the video full screen as well at the top with that option. And also if you need to resync your ideal or video at any point of this presentation, just feel free to refresh your browser and that should clear up. And as it relates to questions or anything like that, we would love to hear your questions in the chat. So feel free to post any questions that you may have throughout the presentation in the chat and then we'll at the end we'll try to.

Get all your questions answered or you may get your questions answered during the presentation, but we'll do our best to try to make sure every question is answered.

And so at this time, I do want to introduce a great resource here at the University of Illinois Springfield, Dr Megan Stiles, who is an associate professor and the program director for the Environmental Studies Program. So thank you all for joining us and take it away.

Thank you, Benjamin, for that introduction. Hello, everybody. It's great to see you here. As Benjamin said, my name is Megan Stiles, and I have been a faculty member here since 2014. I have just a little bit of a cold, so my voice might sound a little bit ****** but I look forward to chatting with you and answering all the questions that you have. I'm going to get started with a little bit of a presentation.

That will give an overview of our programs here at UIS, our graduate programs, and then afterwards I want to leave lots of time to answer your questions.

So I want to start with talking about the programs that we offer. So we have a masters of science and Ms, and we have 3 concentrations in that Ms Now, one of the first questions that a lot of prospective students have for me or for other faculty in the program is which concentration is right for me. So I want to talk about each of these concentrations and give you a little bit of an idea of which ones might work best depending on your career ambitions. So the general environmental science concentration, what's important about that is that it's really meant for students that have.

Strong natural science background that are planning on doing a research thesis as their closure option. So for all Masters programs here at UIS you have to do some kind of a closure option and an ENS. We allow a thesis, a graduate project or in some concentrations a 200 and 4040 hour internship. That internship is our most popular closure option, but it's important to note that it is not available for the general environmental science concentration.

And the reason for that is that this concentration is very flexible. All of the electives, all of the courses are electives beyond the core courses that all students in the program have to take. Which means that you can work with your research supervisor to decide which courses are right for you depending on the research project that you want to undertake. Because you have to undertake a research thesis project to do the general environmental science concentration, we ask that you identify someone on our faculty who has already agreed to be your research supervisor.

Before you apply. So that means you would need to write look at our faculty web page, read about the kinds of research that we do, think about what kinds of research you want to conduct, and have a pretty good idea of what that project might look like. Do you want to work with people? Do you want to work with plants? Do you want to work with animals? What is the specific research question you'd like to answer? And if you're already far enough along that you know the answer to those questions, then this might this concentration might be right for you. And what you'll want to do is is reach out to the faculty member who's interests.

Align more closely with yours to see if they might be willing to be the supervisor for your research project.

OK, this concentration, like all of our masters concentrations is available online and on ground and this might be the best one if you know that you really want to do research and you want to go on to get a PhD and you need to show that you can do that independent thesis project. So the other two concentrations in our degree are actually the most popular sustainable development and policy and environmental planning and management. And part of the reason is that these don't require a research thesis. With these concentrations you are allowed to use a 240 hour professional.

Internship as your closure option. I actually teach the capstone course, and a thesis is incredibly valuable, but so is a professional internship. So that internship is is is a place where you're able to apply the skills that you've gained in your degree and in your courses to a real world situation. It's a great job experience that you can list on your resume, and it's as or sometimes more valuable than doing a thesis depending on what your career ambitions are. So this sustainable development and policy concentration, this one is interdisciplinary.

So if you have a biology degree, it's open to you. If you have an anthropology degree like I do, it's also open to you. You can come from any academic background as long as you meet our minimum requirements and this concentration would be open to you. It's not like general environmental science where you really need to have that natural science background.

Uh, you don't need to find a research supervisor to apply because we do allow you to use that internship as your closure option. But if later on after you enter the program you decide that you actually really want to do a thesis, that option is still open to you. You would just need to reach out later on to one of our faculty members and establish that relationship.

Um, also, this is probably the best fit for you if you know that you're really interested in policy issues, environmental regulation or you want to work in the private sector for a business focused on sustainability, marketing or sustainability solutions. And again, like all of our concentrations, this one is available online and on ground, our third concentration.

Is the environmental planning and management concentration like sustainable development and policy? This one is also interdisciplinary. It's open to students from all backgrounds. So if you have a veterinary science degree, you would qualify. Same thing if you had a sociology or an education degree. Our program is interdisciplinary in that you're going to be taking classes in environmental science, natural science and policy and social science. We want you to have that broad background and therefore it's open to anyone depending on your background ahead of this. So again, like sustainable development and policy.

You can do a thesis with this, but you don't have to, so we don't require you to identify our research supervisor in advance and you can use that 240 hour internship as your closure option.

This is probably your best fit if you're really interested in GIS. So GIS stands for geographic information systems. It's a set of computer applications that you can use to map the relationships between environmental and social data, or if you know that you want to go into environmental management or planning as your next career step. And this one pairs really well with our GIS certificate. So there are three concentration core requirements that are required for this, and one of them.

Is one of the courses in the GIS certificate, and then you can use some of your electives to also cover the courses that are in the GIS certificate. So you can get this degree and the GIS certificate without taking any additional courses, and it pairs very well because there's some overlap in the curriculum. And like all of our concentrations, this one is also offered online and on ground.

So I just mentioned this, but we also offer a graduate certificate in geographic Information systems. No matter which of our concentrations you are enrolled in, you can also enroll in this graduate certificate. It involves 3 courses, fundamentals of GIS or remote sensing course and an advanced GIS applications course. In order to proceed with the GIS certificate, you have to get a B or better in each of these classes to move on to the next course. It's also offered online and on ground in alternating years. We offer these courses.

They're on ground or online to accommodate both online and on ground students, and it can be pursued alone or concurrently with a masters degree. So some of you may already have a masters degree or may be interested in a master's degree in another program, maybe business, maybe public health. You can enroll in another Masters degree program here at UIS and still do Rgis certificate. You would just apply for it as part of that application process. You can also just do the GIS certificate. You don't have to be enrolled in a masters program, So what does it take to actually?

Ally, we have a ton of information available at the website listed here, the back slash perspective students. So if you go to our ENS web page and you can find that by just Googling ENS and UIS and you'll see that there's a prospective students tab. If you just click that tab, you'll find great information about our prereq prerequisites or application requirements. Some of the differences between the different concentrations that I just went over.

Links to the catalog so that you can see what courses are a part of each of these concentrations, etc. It's a really good resource for you.

So in order to apply, there are a few prerequisite prerequisites that we ask that you already met. Now, as you can see from the things that are in parentheses, if you don't already have some of these things, it doesn't mean that you can't get into the program. We may be willing to extend you an offer of conditional admission, which would mean that you would need to take one or more courses in your first year, either to meet a prerequisite that you didn't have or to raise your GPA before you could continue in the program. But you were cumulative. Undergraduate GPA really needs to be a 3O.

The only way that we consider you for conditional admission is if you're just really, really close to that and you have work experience, or you have a really strong essay and letters that suggest that although your cumulative GPA was below 3.0, you will be able to succeed in Graduate School. That's what we're looking for for conditional admission.

We also specify that you have 8 credits of social science and eight credits of natural science in your undergrad degree. If you got a liberal arts degree where you had to take general education requirements before you were able to take your major requirements, you already have these credits. You will have taken kind of a mix of social science and natural science courses, so you don't need to worry too much about counting those credits in your transcript. But most students, especially if you did your undergraduate work at institution here in the United States and have a liberal arts degree, you're going to have those.

Credits and the reason for that is that, again, our program is interdisciplinary, so we just want to see that you have taken social science and natural science classes. You've been able to succeed in those, and you're ready for a program that involves graduate training in both of those sectors. We also want you to have taken an upper division undergraduate ecology class with a lab. So that's an ecology class with a lab that is at the 300 or 400 level if you're at an institution here in the United States. Now, if you don't have that, we definitely allow conditional admission.

And this one. So if you don't have it and you can't get it before you apply, you don't need to worry about this one too much. What we would do if you meet the other requirements that are a good candidate is conditionally admit you and that if you're an on ground student, we actually offer A500 level graduate version of the ecology class that you can take in your first fall semester. That will count as an elective towards your degree. Or if you're an online student or you don't have time to take that particular course as one of your electives, you can take ES 425, which is of course called ecological issues. That's offered.

Online and that course, because it's at the undergraduate level, is a prerequisite that won't count towards your degree, but it will, it will go ahead and meet that requirement so that you can continue with the graduate program. So that's what you have to have before you apply. So to apply, all of these things are outlined again on that perspective students page on our web page. But we ask for a 300 word academic essay and we actually have a prompt that tells you exactly what should be in that essay on that web page that's cited here on this slide. So that's not a mystery.

Basically, we ask you to write about a pressing environmental issue and how the degree would help you approach that issue. We want 2 letters of recommendation. It's important that if at all possible, one of these letters is from someone that you had as a professor or an instructor that can speak to your academic performance in the classroom in the school setting, and the other one can be a professional reference from someone that you have worked with from your supervisor, say at work. I'm going to talk in just a minute about our graduate public service internship program, which is how most of our on ground.

Students fund their education. If you are applying for the GPSI program, note that you're going to need a third letter of recommendation. So we will share between our application and the GA and the GSI application the two letters of recommendation that are required for our program. But then you need a third letter from somebody for that program. So if you're thinking about applying for GA and GSI positions at the same time as you apply for the program, go ahead and get 3 letters of recommendation so that that's taken care of. You're going to have to send your.

And scripts and all of those go to admissions. So please do not send those to me at the ENS website. I can't do anything with them. Everything goes through admissions. They uploaded into a system and then they released that application to me and the department. So make sure that you do that you're going to fill out an online application. And then remember, if you want to apply for that general environmental science concentration and you're planning on doing a research thesis, you need to have reached out in advance to one of our faculty members, and that person needs to have indicated that they are willing to be your.

Their supervisor. And remember, if you're not sure about the thesis yet, and you're not sure about making those connections right now, you can apply to either of the other two concentrations. And we do have the ability, once you've been accepted to the graduate program, to move between the concentrations and your first semester if you decide that another one is a better fit for you.

I look forward to answering your questions about that. I'm sure people have questions about that. So let me talk really quickly about funding opportunities. So most of our on campus graduate students get their degree almost fully funded. That's right, I said almost fully funded through the Graduate Public Service internship program here at US. This is an incredible program where you work for the two years that you're in the graduate program for one of our state agencies, for our students. That's usually the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources or sometimes the Illinois Department of Public Health, if they have sort of an environmental health position. And that's something that is you have interest in. So you will graduate if you do this program with both the Masters degree and two years of professional experience in one of these state agencies and that is a winning combination on the job market. I see our students get hired for these agencies and Illinois, I get them hired at agencies in other States and in the private and the nonprofit sector.

On the basis of the degree and that combination of experience, it gives you an edge over other students who have just gotten a masters degree. I can't say enough about how important and wonderful this program is. So as I said, it's it's almost all inclusive. It pays for almost your entire degree. It has a tuition waiver, a partial fee waiver, and you get a stipend. You are on the hook for just a little bit of tuition and a few fees that it doesn't cover, but it reduces the costs of our program dramatically.

Dramatically, dramatically. And you essentially graduate windows with what is an almost free degree and those two years of professional experience. So if you're interested in our on ground program, there is no reason not to apply for the GSI internships at the same time that you're applying for our program online. You just check the box that says you also want to apply for GP, SI, and GA positions.

And remember that this requires a third letter of recommendation. So keep that in mind when you're reaching out right now to your recommenders. Go ahead and reach out for a third letter if you know you want to apply for this as well. And we have a great track record with getting, getting with our students, getting funded for this literally 99.999 repetend percent of our students end up being funded through this program and they do great things, working again directly for the EPA, DNR, etcetera. So they're working with wildlife, they're working with water, they're working with underground.

George, tanks that are leaking all the things that you might do in a career in environmental studies you would be able to do while you're pursuing the degree in one of these internships. I didn't put this on a slide, but we do also at US have some graduate assistantships opportunities. So when you're applying for the GSI you'll see that you're also checking a box for the GA we don't have a lot of those available. We have one available for our department every other year. Currently there's someone in that position, but there are occasionally other departments that will hire our students. So we've had students that have gotten hired, for instance.

Set up labs for the chemistry department and the ragas, so there's not a lot of positions, but go ahead and apply for those. You'll end up in the general pool, and it might be the case that you'll be interviewed for one of those. We also have a program called the Illinois Legislative Internship program. So if you're really interested in working for the Illinois State legislature or even, you know, federal political processes like that in the in the future you want to be a lobbyist. I recommend checking out that assistantship as well. There's information about that.

The same page as the GSI. It doesn't have quite as lucrative of a tuition waiver, and it's a little bit shorter time period. But it's also a really great experience if working for the state legislature is something that interests you. So check those out as well. But most of our students get their funding through this graduate public Service internship program.

So I see that there's a couple questions in the chat that I think I'm about to start answering. Um, so some people have said they have a computer science background or they have a civil engineering undergraduate background. So the answer is yes, you are absolutely qualified to apply for our program because it's interdisciplinary. So the sustainable development and policy and the environmental planning and management concentrations are really open to anyone with any undergraduate background. And and those definitely have skills and courses that will apply.

So what do I am I gonna do with this degree? So there are many career paths and this is just kind of a general idea. But our students have a really strong track record with getting employed straight out of their Masters degree in either the public sector or working as an environmental or natural resource regulator or administrator. So especially for our students that have done that graduate public service internship, they might get hired straight away by the Illinois EPA or the Department of Natural Resources or one of the other states. Or for our international students, some of you may aspire.

To go home and work for your own national Environmental Protection Agency, all those career paths are open for you and are all of our concentrations. Even the general environmental concentration is probably going to have some coursework focused on environmental policy. So what's in environmental policy? How do you actually implement it? And that knowledge will work not only in Illinois but in other States and will be applicable to international locations as well.

We have lots of students that also work in the private sector, um, so some work for major corporations as the person who's in charge of either sustainability marketing, so the person that helps consumers understand what the company is doing to be more sustainable and more environmentally friendly. Others work kind of more behind the scenes as an environmental health and safety manager. So that's the person within a company that actually makes sure that your company is doing what is necessary to comply with environmental regulations. So if you were an environmental health and safety.

Manager for Amazon, for instance, you would need to be familiar with the regulations in all the states where Amazon is working, all of the local jurisdictions, and also the federal laws that apply. And you would be in charge of making sure that management and workers are trained and are in compliance with those kinds of laws.

We have good training within our program to prepare you for those kinds of positions. And then of course you get a lot of on the job training once you get into those positions as well. So lots of other private sector positions as well, things like sustainable supply chain management, etc. Pretty much anything having to do with environmental health and safety or sustainability or degree is going to prepare you well to work for a company that has an interest in upholding those environmental health and safety standards. And then last but not least, we have lots of students.

That are do gooders that decide to go into the nonprofit sector. They may be just a few examples of recent students. We have a wonderful organization here in Springfield called the Illinois Stewardship Alliance that focuses on reforming agricultural policy at the state and federal level to make it easier for small farmers who are using more sustainable methods to farm, for them to thrive, and for them to have policies that support their activities and subsidies that that help people transition from industrial agricultural methods to sustainable.

That's so the current policy coordinator for that organization is one of our graduate students who actually did her internship for her capstone with Illinois Stewardship Alliance and did a GPSI internship with the EPA. So everything that she got in our program allowed her to be really successful and get the job that she had always wanted with that nonprofit organization. We also have students that work for the Illinois Environmental Council, for the Clean Water Network, lots of organizations nationwide that.

Are focused on promoting the conditions for.

Positive environmental change, whether that's lobbying for or writing good environmental policy, or doing outreach and advocacy to get the public interested in those issues.

So there are career paths in all of these different sectors and we have on a great alumni network that is working in some pretty incredible companies. We've got alumni that work for Subaru, for Valvoline, for New York Air Brake, all sorts of big companies that they're working in, either sustainability or environmental health and safety. And if you're in our program, we're delighted to connect you with those alums and they become a resource for you as well to think about your career path and what you need to do while you're in the program to make sure that.

You're set for their next step.

OK, so let me talk just a minute about the faculty. So I'm just one of the faculty member in our department. We have six fantastic faculty members. More information about us and our research interests is available on our faculty web page. If you go to that faculty webpage, note that you're going to need to click on our names to be taken to another page where it talks a little bit more about about the kinds of things that we're interested in working with students to do. So if you are reaching out to a research supervisor, note that we do very different.

Things. So it's best if you don't send a generic e-mail to all of the faculty saying I love you, I wanna work with you. Because that doesn't really make sense. You should have a really good sense of what your research topic wants to be. And if it's you want to work with people, then you probably want to reach out to me or one of our cultural geographers, Dr German, or Doctor Hansen. And if you want to work with wildlife or with river ecosystems, you might want to reach out to Doctor Ting, who's our essentially our wildlife ecologist, wildlife biologist, biologist who works with endangered species, or doctor Blunt.

Um or Doctor Rothfus who work with river ecosystems and physical systems, so make sure that you understand. If you're reaching out to somebody to be your teacher site supervisor, make sure that they're doing the kind of research that would allow them to actually advise you well. And remember that you don't need a research supervisor in advance if you're applying for either the sustainable development policy or the environmental planning and management concentrations.

So our faculty are really committed to hands-on learning. So if you're here in our on ground program, we're going to try to take you out in the field as much as we can. You're going to have small class sizes where you're really going to get to know us, and the same is true if you're in our online program. We have relatively small class sizes. The online classes are set up to be asynchronous. So you'll have some material that you're working on for the week, but you'll probably have more than one deadline during the week. And a lot of those are going to be discussion board posts so that you can really interact with your fellow.

Students in the class and with your professors. So even though you might be an online class, as we strive to make those really interactive and we really pride ourselves on getting to know you and helping tailor the program to your needs, so our faculty also have a wealth of both academic and professional experience. A lot of us have worked in different sectors and can give you some good advice about how to apply for federal jobs or a job in business. We have a wonderful set of adjuncts to that that work.

That our professionals who are environmental consultants et cetera. So never hesitate to reach out and say hello. We are very happy to hear from you.

So I'm going to skip ahead to my last slide for just a second, just so I can point out that my office phone number and my e-mail are here. So if you have any questions that we don't answer today, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly and I'm happy to answer those questions. e-mail is better than the phone. If you do reach out to me by phone, leave a message because it'll record that message and I'll send it to me by e-mail. And then even if I'm out of the office, I'll get that fast. So I'm gonna stop there and I'm gonna answer some of your questions. I'll see what we've got here in the chat 1st, and then we're open to new questions in the chat.

As well.

Um, so it looks like people are excited about these internship opportunities. Um.

And one person has applied for a GA or GSI and has yet to get a decision letter.

So one thing that might be relevant here is that your application for your GPA or your GSI position doesn't drop into their pool until you've already been accepted to your degree program. So if you haven't already received notification that you were accepted to the NSA program, what's happening is that admissions is probably reviewing your materials and they haven't released them to us yet. I check the applications every day and try to process those really quickly.

But if you haven't gotten a decision about funding yet, it might be because you haven't been accepted to the program yet. And So what will happen is first I'll accept you and then you'll drop into that pool. And then the other thing that happens is that if you're want a GSI position, you have to interview for that position. So you apply by a certain date and then somebody from GPSI is going to reach out to you and think, ask about your interests, and then schedule you for interviews with some of the offices within these agencies.

That are relevant to your interests. Now, if you're an international student, and I'm not sure whether any of you are, one drawback to the GPS I program is that they require you to be in the United States in order to interview for those jobs. So sometimes that's difficult for students that are still overseas. But what some of our international students do, if possible, is they self fund their first semester and then they go through a late round of interviewing for GPSI positions and they get one starting in their second semester or starting in their second year.

Yeah, so there's lots of hope. There's a student here about any hope for students who do not want to research based masters of science. So yes, absolutely. So the only one that requires the research based thesis project is the general environmental science concentration. The other two concentrations within our Masters, sustainable development and policy and environmental planning and management are meant for students that might have a more professional focus that aren't planning on doing research. So I really encourage you to look at the curricula for those two programs and apply for one of those and remember that the titles.

Say a lot. Sustainable development and policy might be best for you if you're interested in policy regulation, working for a company with sustainability, working for an NGO or a nonprofit. Organizations focused on sustainability and environmental planning and management might be best if you want to take a GIS course or more than one GIS course. And you might be interested in environmental consulting or environmental management or something that where that title and that particular set of courses is going to be most useful to you.

All right. Looks like we picked up a lot more people. Thank you all for introducing yourself here.

Yes, so please, if anybody else has additional questions, just throw those up in the chat and I would be happy to answer them.

So fully funded scholarships for international students. So you can as an international student apply for the GSI and the GA positions, the GA positions, we do interview people over zoom, you know, while you're in your home country and you might get one of those. Although like I said, an E&S, we only have one every other year and then there may be other departments that are will hire you, but it might not be the EMS department. So those are we have fewer of those opportunities.

And then you can get funded for the GSI internship. But the trick is that you probably won't be able to get funded in your first semester. You'll have to self fund come complete your first semester of classes, and while you're doing that, apply for the late round of GPSI GPSI.

Internships and hope to get a late one or one that starts on your second year and then I see this question about NASA certification. I am actually not sure about what that means. I'm going to look it up really quickly and see if I can figure that out, but if you could explain in the.

In the chat. What you mean by that? That might be helpful for me, because that's not a program that I'm familiar with. Are you talking about the actual?

National Space agency. They they have, um certifications for students. I'm not, I'm not sure of that program.

But while you're hopefully explaining that to me, what that is, I can talk a little bit more about some things for international students so.

US has a great resource page for international students and we also have an e-mail address that's just for international students. So if you are an international students that is thinking about applying for a graduate program, I am going to try to drop this in the chat.

This is going to be your Bible. This web page is going to tell you a lot about.

Getting your transcripts, um, translated so that your GPA is in the US system, whether or not you need English proficiency exam or proof, depending on where you're from and whether English is one of the national languages, all that kind of stuff that happens outside of the NSA program, but the international admissions folks are really responsive to e-mail, and they have that great resource online. So check that out and that'll help answer some of those questions.

Um.

Let me think another question that people often ask that I probably should have put on a slide, is about admissions deadlines. So we have rolling admissions, which means that you can apply to the program at any point. However, the best time to apply is no later, preferably than six weeks before you want to start.

And the reason for this is that it just takes time for us to process your application and we want you to have time to be accepted, to find out about your funding, to meet with your advisor and plan your courses and not be rushing at the last minute.

So we don't have a set application deadline, but keep in mind if you look up when the semester that you want to start is going to is going to start, and you want to apply well ahead of that. So for instance, if you wanted to apply for the fall, it would be great to have your application. I'm sorry. If you're going to start in the spring, it would be great to have your application by November 1st because that gives us plenty of time before the holidays here in the US to go ahead and get your application processed. If you're going to apply to start in the fall, it would be great to have your application.

By maybe July 1st and again that gives us, that gives us a good amount of time before.

The semester starts in August to get started. If you want to apply for GA ships or GSI internships, they have an earlier deadline. So they have a March 15th or an April 1st or an April 15th deadline depending on the year. So look that up on the GPS website and and make sure that you get that right that deadline right.

And if you read the fine print, you have to have been accepted into your program before your application is going to drop for that. So don't use the GSI deadline as your deadline to apply for our program because you need to have already been accepted. So apply maybe a month ahead of that deadline so that we can go ahead and get you accepted. It'll drop to GSI and you won't miss that deadline.

Can international students don't meet the course GPA apply for this program? So am I 7th grade?

Yeah, I still. So I think maybe the NASA certification might be something that might be specific to your educational program. So I'm still not that familiar with that, but I really appreciate you're explaining it a little bit more in the in the chat. You can feel free to reach out to me by e-mail maybe, and we can kind of puzzle through how to answer that question best. That might be useful. And so if you don't meet the minimum course GPA, you really need to be really close to that 3.0. So if you have maybe a.

29 But you have relevant work experience. You have strong letters from your recommenders. You have a really strong essay. We might be willing to consider you for conditional admission, but that 3.0 GPA is really important and if you don't meet it.

Um, whether you're an international student or not, one thing that you can do is, um, enroll in and pay for one or more classes in our program as a non degree seeking student and you know, get an A in that class and show that you can succeed and then that might make you eligible for the program in another semester. That of course involves a cost. So that's something to think about.

Great. Thank you. I'm glad you're going to reach out to me about the NASA certification.

So Springfield is also a really fun place to go to Graduate School because we have all these state agencies that are working on environmental regulation here in the state legislature meets here. So if you're interested in the policy process here in the United States or in environmental regulation, this is one of the best places that you can be. One thing that really sets our masters apart from other programs is that we have that incredible opportunity to have your degree fully funded there to my.

Knowledge. There's no other masters in environmental studies in the United States that has that opportunity to fund it through a professional service internship.

And that, like I said, that combination of the degree and that professional experience is really a winning combination on the job market.

So hello everyone. Again, we do like to thank everyone for attending this presentation with us. Like I said before, this presentation has been recorded. So you will be able to access this webinar at a later date and also to.

She has listed her contact information too, so if you have any additional questions, just feel free to reach out and we'll get those questions answered for you. So once again, I just want to thank everyone for coming out and attending today.

Yeah.