About
Can you picture yourself roaming the Alaskan wilderness looking for new sources of gold, copper, and other economic minerals? Are you interested in investigating and helping to solve the environmental problems associated with exploiting hydrocarbon energy resources using state-of-the-art procedures such as fracking and horizontal drilling? Would you like to help communities develop new groundwater supplies?
The emphasis of the 30-semester-hour MS program in geology is in coastal geology, environmental geology, hydrogeology, and solid Earth geology. It attracts students, in part, due to the location near North Carolina's coastal system that includes extensive barrier islands and the second largest estuarine system in the United States. However, because our civilization is based upon acquisition and wise development of natural resources such as oil, gas, and minerals, increased emphasis has recently been placed on these sub-disciplines.
Students in the program conduct research that contributes to the discovery and proper management of these resources and are encouraged to take advantage of state-of-the art laboratories, analytical equipment (X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, ICAPES), field equipment, and research vessels enabling pursuit of a wide variety of projects. The department teaches and trains students in areas of great societal and global significance, such as environmental geology, economic geology, hydrogeology, climate change, structural geology, and petroleum geology. The importance of geology to the nation's future is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate of an 18-percent job growth for earth scientists from 2008 to 2018.
ECU Advantage
Due to the variety and balance of courses offered, students are able to undertake thesis research in their preferred area of the geological sciences, but to also take a selection of courses that enable them to obtain employment in other areas. Over the past decade, 94 percent of graduates within ECU's program have become gainfully employed as geologists. They have secured careers in environmental regulations, hydrogeologic investigation, mineral and petroleum discovery and exploitation, wetland mitigation, flood prediction, pollution abatement, and environmental site audits. Because students are involved in faculty research programs, they have the opportunity to conduct research in a wide variety of geologic and geographic settings, including overseas.
What You Will Study
To view GEOL courses, go here.
A comprehensive assessment is required for all graduate programs at ECU. The comprehensive assessment for the non-thesis option is the completion of a written document describing a research project supervised by a faculty member, plus an oral presentation of that research project to a committee of ECU graduate faculty. Finalizing this work takes place within the course of GEOL 6998, which students pursuing the non-thesis degree option take in their final semester. The successful completion of the course is the last major requirement for the non-thesis Geology, MS. A student whose research project paper and/or presentation is unsatisfactory will earn a grade of I (incomplete) in the course. In that case, revisions to the paper and/or presentation are required to complete the course. The comprehensive assessment for the thesis option is the successful completion of a thesis.