Environmental Studies

Few people I know, one of them is already applied.

Awesome.

Well, welcome to the US Graduate week. We're excited to have you here. My name's Sarah Adams. I'm actually part of the admissions team here at UIS. Before we get the presentation started today, I just want to go over a couple of housekeeping items just so that you're aware the webinar is being recorded and you, it will be available for your viewing later. So don't feel like you need to take a bunch of frantic notes. Within the share screen, you'll see that there's a closed captioning option. It's on the bar, top right corner, a little CC button.

Right next to it is also the option to make video full screen if you'd like to do that as well. Also, if you need to resync your audio or video at anytime, just refresh the browser and that should clear things up. You know, we love your questions in the chat. Go ahead and drop those in. Feel free to post throughout. I would say don't post anything about your particular application though. That is to keep your information safe. But if you have questions about the program or just admissions in general. So we're going to be looking at questions at the end of the session. So we might put those off on pause.

The later and then go through those as we finish up. So I know we've got several people today, which is wonderful. We're happy to have you here. And with that, I want to introduce you to doctor Megan Stiles from the Environmental studies program. Thank you, Doctor Stiles for joining us today. I'm going to hand it over to you.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for being here. I'm doctor Megan Stiles. I've been at UAS since 2014 and I'm going to show some slides that will give you a quick overview of our graduate program. And then I'm going to leave time at the end for some questions. So any questions that you pop into the chat now at the end of this presentation, I will try to answer those.

Questions specifically, so I'm glad you're interested in our program.

Oops.

Sorry, the slide deck is freezing here. Give me one second to try to get that to work.

OK. Let me start with a short overview of the programs that we offer within our graduate program. We have 3 concentrations. The first of these is the general environmental science concentration. This one tends to be the most appealing to students, I think, because the curriculum is very flexible. But I want to stress when you're doing your application that this is really for students that have a strong natural science background. So if you have a social science or a policy background, this probably isn't the concentration for you. And then what's important to note about this concentration is that it also.

Requires you to do a research thesis as your closure option. So in order to even apply for this particular concentration within the Ms. you have to have already identified one of our faculty members that you would like to work with on a research project. And you should already have a really good idea of what you might want to do for your master's thesis. And again, that should be in the natural environmental sciences. So if you are interested in this and you would like to do a research thesis as your closure option for the Ms. I encourage you to go to our ENS web page.

And then click on the individual profiles of our faculty to see the kind of research that they're doing. The natural Science faculty in our department are really Doctor Ting and Doctor Blunt. We also have some affiliated faculty in chemistry and in biology that might be willing to work with you on a thesis. The other faculty in the department really do social science or Policy Research and would be happy to advise you if you want to do a thesis in one of our other concentrations that's not focused on natural science. This concentration is offered both online and on ground.

Uh, and it has a relatively, um, flexible curriculum, which is nice.

Uh, so this is an overview of that curriculum. So all of our concentrations within the Ms. program require to you to take three Common Core courses and environmental natural sciences course and environmental social sciences course, and then a research methods course. And then this one doesn't have any concentration electives. All of the electives are open electives. And the reason for that, again, is that it's really focused on people that want to do a research thesis. So you would choose courses that really matched the research topic that you're pursuing for your thesis in consultation.

With your advisor, and again, there's only one closure option for this master's concentration, and that is a research thesis or a graduate project, which is also a significant research based project.

Our next concentration, which is actually our most popular we have or tied with environmental planning management, is sustainable development and policy. So this one is open to students of any background. You don't have to have a strong natural science background. You could have a social science or a policy background. It's interdisciplinary and instead of having to do a research thesis or a graduate project, you can use a capstone internship. That's a 240 hour internship that you complete usually in your last semester of the program as your closure option.

You can do a research thesis if that's something that you want to do, but you don't have to. You can do this. Applied internship is your closure option, and that's one of the things that makes this the most popular because many of our students are already working full time or want that professional experience instead of a research thesis in order to close their degree. So because you don't have to do a research project yours, no research supervisor required to apply in advance. So if you were getting hung up on that, I suggest that you apply for either the sustainable development of policy or in the environmental planning and management.

Concentration, which I'll talk about in just a second. This is probably the best fit in terms of a concentration if you want to focus on policy issues or sustainability solutions that deal with how to fix some of our sort of wicked complex environmental problems that involve both social science and natural science and policy solutions. This concentration is also offered both on ground and online.

And this is just a snapshot of the curriculum for this concentration. So for this concentration, again we have that shared core, those three courses that all of our students have to take five, 51552 and 553. And then your closure option, you can do a research thesis or a graduate project, but you also have that option that wasn't available with general environmental science to do that applied Capstone internship as your closure. This one also has a little bit more structured curriculum. So we have 3 concentration core courses, environmental policy and analysis, research, natural resources.

Policy administration and sustainable development. And then beyond that, you're going to have 12 credits of electives, which is 3/4 credit courses that you'll select in conjunction and in consultation with your faculty advisor. So not as flexible as the general environmental science curriculum, but part of the reason for that is that we want to make sure that you get the courses in our department that are going to be best for you if you want a policy or a sustainable development career.

And our last concentration, this one's the most popular with people that want to study geographic information systems in one way or another, is environmental planning and management.

This one is also interdisciplinary, so like sustainable development and policy, it's open to students from all backgrounds. Social science, natural science policy, the closure option include a research thesis or a graduate project if you want to undertake that. But you also with this concentration, just as you did with sustainable development of policy, have the option to use a 240 hour professional internship as your closer option. So this also makes this a very popular concentration within our program. So no research supervisors needed to apply because you're not required to do that.

Research thesis and this is really the best fit if you want to focus on GIS applications, environmental management or planning. It's offered both online and on ground, and it's the concentration that pairs best with our our graduate certificate in GIS, which I'll talk to you more about in just a second.

So let's look quickly at the curriculum for this. So again, it's those same 3 core courses that are in all three concentrations. Again, with your closure option, you can do a research thesis or a graduate project, but you also have the option to use that professional Capstone internship to close the degree. The structured curriculum for this concentration involves 3 courses, one of which is either intro GIS or our advanced GIS course, that natural resources policy and administration course, which is a policy course that was also required for sustainable development policy.

And then ENS 501, which is environmental planning and management. Beyond that, you'll have three courses, 4 credits each, that are electives that you choose in consultation with your advisor. So because this concentration already requires GIS ENS 404, it pairs best with our graduate certificate in geographic Information Systems because there's already overlap with one of those courses. And then what you can do is you can use the other two courses that are required for the GIS certificate as electives.

Towards that master's concentration, you can do that with any of the concentrations. So if you did general environmental science or you did sustainable development and policy, you can use these three courses as electives for that concentration. It just works a little bit more easily with environmental planning and management, because one of them is already required as a concentration core, which gives you another elective to play with.

So the geographic information Systems graduate certificate involves 3 courses, ENS 404 which is an intro GIS course, fundamentals of GIS, ENS 405 which is the fundamentals of remote sensing and then ENS 503 which is our advanced GIS applications course. This is also offered online and on ground and you can again pursue it concurrently with any of our Masters degree concentrations and you're allowed to overlap between the two, so you can just take the courses that are required for the Masters and also earn the certificate.

If you choose your courses wisely.

So how do you apply and? I hope that you will all decide to apply. Note that we do have some prerequisites. We want you to have at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA.

Conditional admission may be possible if you're just a hair off of that. And when I say if you're just a hair off, I mean a 2.9 something. If we give you conditional admission, that would mean that you would have to take two of the core courses, Evans 551 and ENS 552, in your first year within the program, whether you're online or on ground, and get a beer better in both of those courses in order to be fully admitted. If you were conditionally admitted, you won't know that your experience as a student will be exactly the same, it's just at some point to continue in the program will have to verify that you made those conditions.

That you got those grades. Uh, but if you got a 3.0 or better, great. That's our requirement. You have to have 8 credits of Social Science, 8 credits of natural science. I wouldn't stress out too much about this. If you've got a liberal arts BA from any institution in the US, or even if you're an international student that took kind of a wide breadth of general education students when you were in your early years in school, odds are that you already meet this requirement. And then we do require an upper division undergraduate ecology course with a lab. So upper division means 300.

400 level. Again, if you don't have that class, we frequently admit students with conditional admission and then you just have to take an on ground ecology course in your first semester. That is a 500 level course that will actually count as an elective towards your degree. Or if you're in our online program, we have a 400 level online course that you can take that will meet this prerequisite. It won't count towards your degree, but it will make sure that you have full admission after your first fall semester here. So we have ways to get around that if you don't already have it.

So in terms of the application materials, we do require a 300 word academic essay. If you go to our website, our ENS website, and you click the perspective students tab, you will see the prompt for that essay. You're going to write about a pressing environmental problem and how this degree will help you to solve it. And to advance your career goals you need 2 letters of recommendation. At least one should be from an academic source. So I mean an instructor or professor or someone who has had you as a student in an academic setting if you've been out of school for a long time and you don't have that.

Feel free to reach out to me to ask, um, what some alternatives might be. Uh, we need your transcripts from all the institutions that you've been enrolled with in the past. You need to fill out an online application, and then if you're applying for that general environmental science concentration, you're going to have to have identified in advance of your application someone who has said they are willing to be your research supervisor. So you'll need to reach out to an EMS faculty member, let them know what kind of masters project you're thinking about doing, and they will have to write back and indicate that they are willing to be your research.

Supervisor um, in order for you to be considered for that program. If you can't meet that step, or you don't want to do a research thesis, please apply to the sustainable development and policy or the environmental planning and management concentration, because those are a better fit for you, so funding opportunities.

The vast majority of our on ground students are funded through something called the Graduate Public Service internship, which is a really incredible program that we have here at UIS that is unique to any other institution that I've run into in the US that has a masters of science and environmental sciences. So with this program you will work part time, so 20 hours a week during the school year and then full time in the summer for one of our state agencies here in Springfield that works with environmental regulation for our students, this is usually the EPA.

The Department of Natural Resources, or sometimes the Department of Public Health. This involves a tuition and a partial fees waiver and a stipend. So you'll be paid a stipend for some of your living expenses, and you get to graduate with the degree and two years of professional experience. Which is really wonderful when you're on the job market, not just to have the masters of environmental science, but to also have two years of experience working for an environmental Regulatory agency. Voila, that is a miracle combination when you're applying for jobs. This requires a third letter of recommendation.

And I think they like it to be from somebody who's supervised you in a work setting. So if you're going to apply for both our graduate program and the GSI, which I suggest that all of you do, they are accepting international students into this program. Now, if you're in our on ground program, click the box saying that you want to apply for GSI and GA internships, GPA positions and then submit 3 letters of recommendation, not just two. And you'll be set for this. Most of our students get this, get these, because there are more.

Positions than we have students available to fill them, so you have a really good chance of this. And more information about this program can actually be found on their website. The department can answer a lot of questions about the program. It's best if you go directly to them to ask specific questions about how the costs work or how the application process works, etcetera.

All right, career paths, what can you do with this degree? So our students meet with great success in many different fields. They get public sector jobs, so especially those on ground students that have done the GPSI internship, the GSI internship and our online students as well. We have a lot of people that work in environmental or natural resources regulatory agencies or work for city government, state governments, county governments, doing something involving environmental regulation or sustainability planning. We have many alum alumni who work.

In the private sector, so for companies, it's sustainability managers, environmental health and safety officers or in sustainable supply chain management. And then we, of course have lots of students that go into the nonprofit sector that are do gooders, that are walking, working for nonprofit organizations that are helping with environmental lobbying or to kind of solve environmental problems through a nonprofit career. So our degree will prepare you really well for any of these pop-up possible career paths. And many of our alumni have met with great success along all of these paths. And one thing that we like to do is connect you with those.

Come when you're in the program so that you can do informational interviewing. Ask them how they got their job and and think about sort of how the degree can lead into that kind of a career. Our EMS faculty are really committed to hands on learnings and this goes for our online program as well as our on ground program. So we really like our small class sizes. We try to make our courses as interactive as possible. So in our online classes, that means that you'll have lots of discussion board posts and the instructor will really encourage you to interact with your fellow.

And interact with you and engage with you. So this isn't sort of a hands off program at the on ground or the online level. We have a wealth of academic and professional experiences. We've got both natural and social sciences and people who specialize in policy issues. I encourage you to go to our faculty web page, pull our emails, reach out and say hello if there's someone who's researched or sort of publications interest you. And you can also click on that link to see our faculty web page as well. All right. So I am going to stop there and see what questions you have.

Feel free to pop those in the chat.

OK, I see that we've got people um signing in from Nigeria and Kenya. Hello everyone. Some of you I know have already applied for the program and even been accepted, so it's nice to see you out there. I wish I could actually see your smiling faces.

So please do put your questions in the chat and while I wait for some questions to appear.

I'm going to talk just a little bit more about our online program. If there's any of you that are interested in the online program. So if any of you, any of you are thinking about the online program, you should know that our classes are asynchronous online. So that means that we don't require you to kind of meet virtually in the classroom with everyone at the same time. And the reason that we do that is because so many of our students are in international locations or are living in different time zones or working full time or managing family responsibilities.

So those um online programs are are taught asynchronously. So you'll have deadlines that come up during the week, you'll interact with your fellow students, you'll have to batch your work and and comply with those deadlines each week. But you won't be able to. You'll watch an online lecture and then do assignments so you won't have to log in virtually at the same time. So it looks like people really want me to talk more about funding. So I'm just going to go back to the slide that I had about GPSI. So the two big sources of funding for students in our on ground program are really graduate assistantships.

And the Graduate Public Service internship programs.

So the graduate assistantships, we only have one of those in our department every two years, and that position was just filled. So we won't have a graduate assistantship available for at least another year. However, there are sometimes positions that come up in other departments. So I really do recommend that you click the box to apply for both GA and GPSI positions, get everything in sort of on time or ahead of time, and then if there are other departments that have a position for which you'll be qualified, you drop into that pool, so they.

Review your application. The GPSI program is really what funds most of our on campus students. So definitely apply for that. Have those 3 letters of recommendation. If you're an international student, they are allowing you to interview those positions for those positions over zoom now so you can participate in that process. And the way that it works is that these state agencies have many different positions that are available and they review their applications and they create a list of the people that have applied that they think are qualified or that they're interested in interviewing.

And then you as a student will also create a list of the positions that are available that you think are interesting. And then those matchmaking process and an interview process, which can happen over zoom if you're an international student. And then they rank all the students that they've interviewed and you rank the positions that you've interviewed for. And again, there's a matchmaking process to try to determine whether there is a good fit. So you may get your first choice or you may get your second or your third choice funding. And again, that's a almost full tuition waiver. Almost.

All fuse waiver and a stipend for your living expenses. So it's a really good deal. You essentially graduate with an almost free Masters degree and those two years of professional experience.

Um.

So somebody said about the GSI program. The last sentence states recommendation letters will not be accepted unless they're addressed to the GSI and or GA programs. So I think what that means is, when you have your recommenders send in their recommendation letters, have them say in their first paragraph that they're recommending you for both the graduate program and for the GPS I/GA program, and if they indicate that in the letter, that should be enough in the past.

They have, um, sort of just taken the the letters from the programs that didn't have that mention in there. So I'm not sure how strict they are about that. But if they do have that on the GSI website, that's what I would tell your recommenders to do, to just go ahead and indicate in the first sentence of their recommendation letter that they're recommending you for both the graduate program and for GSI slash GA positions.

Um, so I see that somebody's also asking about a waiver for the transcript authentification certificate. So unfortunately, the only thing that we can sometimes waive is the application fee that goes to US. When it comes to the other fees that have to do with certification of your transcripts or the translation of your transcripts into the US system, those fees are paid to another agency and we unfortunately can't pay those for you. So those fees can't be waived and they are required and when I've talked about.

Um, that was with admissions in the past. You know, they've said we have to remind you if you're an international student that you do have to prove that you have a certain amount of money in your account. So just keep in mind that, you know, you have to constantly verify that you have kind of the income requirements that would allow you to come and study in the US so that, you know, you unfortunately gotta pay those fees for the transcript evaluation.

So what are you looking for in a resume or CV and a resume or CV, we're interested in your previous educational experiences and any relevant sort of professional experiences that you've had. So it may be that you're coming from a background where you really didn't have an environmentally focused undergraduate degree, but you're now working for an agency that that's doing that kind of work. So you know just the standard things that are in a resume or CV or past employment experiences, your educational experiences. So your statement of purpose, we actually have a very specific.

Set of things that we want in that statement of purpose. And if you go to our environmental Studies website, which I'm going to try to pop this in the chat, and you go to our prospective students tab.

Pop that in the chat. If you go to that website and you scan that Scroll down just a little bit, you'll see the requirement for that academic essay. And so this is the what we would like in there.

That's the academic essay, and that is posted on that website as well. So we want that academic essay of 300 words addressing what are your most urgent environmental problems facing your community today. How will a master's degree in environmental studies help prepare you to address these problems? Which areas of environmental specialization, specialization appeal to you the most? So in that we're talking about your concentration, which concentration are you most interested in? And then a brief description of your academic background, including your life experiences that contribute to your academic preparation.

And I see that there is a question about accepting unofficial reports, and unfortunately everything needs to be official for the program.

And Sarah has answered that as well on behalf of admissions.

Saul got to be official. We have to make sure that you are who you say you are and that these are your credentials.

And I should say too, that all of those sorts of things, um, transcripts, all of those things go to admissions. They do not come into the department. So you submit everything online through your application. And then there's information that's available on the admissions website or on the International Admissions website about the other materials that are required and how to submit those. And those all go to admissions, not to the faculty in the department. So you don't need to send us your transcripts or your resume or any of that kind of stuff. You're going to submit that all through admissions.

Um, how much would professional experience compensate for the GPA? That's such a good question. Um, really the GPA is is quite important because that's a good indicator to us of how well you're able to do in school. So.

You know, if you are just shy of that GPA, you've got a 2.9 something and you have really great professional experience that will compensate for it. You're likely then to to get a conditional admission if we all. You also have a strong academic statement that shows that you're a good writer. Got strong letters from your recommenders that say that you know you're really prepared for this degree and for this career. Those things do matter if you're right on the line and just a little bit below that 3.0.

Do you provide, Chris? So. So UIS does provide some career development services. We have a career development center here on campus that online and on campus students are eligible to interact with and they have resume building services. They can help you with job interviews and all sorts of other things. We also, you know, especially if you are in one of our concentrations that requires the capstone internship or you're doing a GSI internship. And I should mention that if you're in the GSI program, you can use that internship as your capstone.

Close your internship for the sustainable development and policy or the environmental planning and management concentrations in our degree so we can roll all of those things into one. And so part of what we do in the Capstone closure course is you develop, you look for jobs that you want to apply for. You develop a good resume and cover letter so that we can have confidence that by the time you graduate, you are ready to apply for jobs. And you're you understand how best to articulate what you've gotten from the degree and from your previous experiences in interviews and in a cover letter to get those materials ready. So yes.

Could you provide career development services? Although you have to apply for those jobs?

Um, no. So the question about the academic essay doesn't mean that every question should be a minimum of 300 words. The minimum of 300 words is for the entire essay. So answering all of those questions.

Uh, and I don't know the answer about which question does the cheapest result authentication fees. I don't know, Sarah, whether you have any indication on that. I think there's just one.

Maybe one option that it has to go through for that official.

Um, review of your transcript but. Or authentication? I don't. I can't. I'm sorry. I don't know the answer to that question.

Um, if your recommendation didn't include GPSI or GA, that's a good question. I would send an e-mail just to verify if there's a problem at all to GPSI mail.

Uhuas.edu I would send an e-mail directly to them to ask how important that is, or whether they'll pull the letters from your application the way they used to. If that's really a problem, they might tell you to go ahead and have another copy of the letter with a new sentence added e-mail to them directly.

So to answer the transfer question, sorry, I was taking a second to get connected. There's a couple options actually. I'll drop into the chat the link where you can see all of the Macy's members that we work with. We also do have an option to pay a fee to have them evaluated in House.

US, if you have multiple transcripts, that's the one I recommend because we only charge one fee for it and a lot of the Macy's members will charge you a per transcript fee. So, but I will drop that into the chat here shortly.

Hmm.

That's so helpful. Thank you, Sarah. I'm learning. I'm learning something too about that, how that happens.

It's a new thing we just started this fall, so.

Great. That's great. Um, so she's going to put more information about that in the chat. Thanks for those questions about the transcript authentication. And it sounds like you can pay just one fee again to get it done by UIS in-house. Can my employer write my recommendation letter? Yes, absolutely. One of your 3 letters can come from an employer or two of them come from come from an employer. From the US perspective, we would really like at least one of those letters, however, to come from somebody that advised you in an academic setting. And again, we're just looking for evidence that you're able to succeed.

In the classroom and that you're well prepared and will do well with the curriculum so that we can make sure we're setting you up for success.

And Sarah has just popped into the chat some more information about the options for the transcript evaluation too, so that should be helpful.

So lots of questions today and lots of participants. I'm glad to see so many of you out there. If any of you have other questions, I'm going to go ahead and put my e-mail into the chat as well, and you're very welcome to e-mail me directly about any of these things.

Um, I may connect you to another resource, but you're welcome to send an e-mail to me directly. I am the one who reviews the applications as well, and so if I have to hit any highlights again, it would be please don't apply for the general environmental science concentration unless you want to do a research thesis. You know what your thesis would be about, like you have an idea of the topic and you have identified a research supervisor in advance. If you can't or haven't done those things, please apply to the sustainable development and policy or the environmental planning and management concentrations don't need a resource.

For five years for those, um, there are a couple of really good options. You might choose sustainable development and policy if you trend more towards the social science and policy bent. You might choose environmental planning and management if you trend more towards the natural science and GIS spent.

Well, thank you so much, Doctor Stiles, for taking some time to go over all this wonderful information. If anybody does have any questions about the admissions process, don't hesitate to e-mail us at admissions@us.edu. And we hope we see you further down the line for more grad week stuff. So have a great day.

OK. Thank you.