Undergraduate Handbook | Earth & Environment

Welcome to Undergraduate Life!

This is where you’ll find information about our undergraduate program, our department, and just general how-to-be-an-undergrad thoughts! We’re here to support you.

Who are we?

Majors: Everything You Need To Know

A Major is the field of study to which you dedicate yourself during your time at Boston University. Typically, a Major requires 64 Credits, but you need to earn 128 Credits to obtain a Bachelor’s Degree.

Most courses are 4 credits, and a “credit” usually requires 3-4 hours of work per week (this includes class/instruction time AND homework/studying time).

Typically, students “declare” their Majors between the end of Freshman year and the middle of Sophomore year. However, you can also change and/or a Major up to Junior year – but make sure to consult with your advisor! You can declare your Major through this form.

The Department of Earth & Environment offers two premier undergraduate degrees or “Bachelor’s Degrees” (BAs) in the natural and social sciences:

Earth & Environmental Sciences

In this major, you will focus on the key natural and physical processes that shape our planet, from the geologic past to the present, and into the future. You will gain a broad foundational understanding of concepts and research techniques in the physical, life, and interdisciplinary natural sciences that inform society about the physical world and environment in which we live. In this major, you will choose a focus for in-depth coursework in one of three areas: Ecosystems, Earth and Climate, and Earth Observations. All levels of the curriculum emphasize analysis of data for critical evaluation of scientific arguments related to the study of Earth and environmental systems.

In this Major, you will be required to complete 3 introductory courses, 6 core courses, and 7 related elective courses. For more information on the courses, you can check out this link.

You can also choose to pursue Honors in the Major as an upperclassperson – this means that you will do in-depth research on a related topic of your choice and present a thesis. You will be advised by a faculty mentor.

Environmental Analysis & Policy

In this major, you will be trained broadly in the social sciences with a clearly defined specialization in the environmental field. You will get an introduction to the energy, resource, and environmental issues that confront society, and the analytical tools that are used to understand them. Such tools include cost-benefit analysis, basic computer modeling skills, policy formulation and analysis, technology assessment, and statistics. You will learn about the social and institutional framework in which environmental and natural resource planning, management, and policy making take place. You will take classes in the natural and physical sciences to ensure they understand the biophysical basis of environmental issues. A number of students double-major in related disciplines such as mathematics, economics, political science, international relations, and geography.

In this Major, you will be required to complete 3 introductory courses, 4 core courses, 4 related courses, and 5 elective courses. For more information on the courses, you can check out this link.

Joint-Department Majors

We jointly administer two additional undergraduate degrees:

Honors in the Major

Receiving “Honors in the Major” means that you’ve completed additional work on top of completing your Major requirements! This is an opportunity to broaden your educational horizons or to deepen your understanding of a specific topic.

The How:

Students who maintain a minimum GPA of 3.0 by the end of their Junior year are eligible to work toward Honors in the Major. Requirements include:

Completion of the two-course sequence of independent study (EE 401 & 402).
Composition of an original thesis. (Note: A Thesis is a large scale research project where you work to uncover something new or explain something in a different and innovative way). This thesis will be approximately 25 pages including graphs & images, and will have at least 25 works cited.
Public presentation / defense of that thesis. (Note: You will be asked to present your work to your mentor, additional faculty, and your peers – this may be scary, but we’re all rooting for you!).
Attendance at 4 department-sponsored seminars, chosen in consultation with your advisor, during the year of your project.

This process will require you to work with a faculty mentor. With that advisor, you will identify a research project to propose and then complete the application.

Minors: Like Majors, But Small

Minors are an additional field of study that you can add into your degree program! Most Minors at BU require approximately 5 courses / 20 credits. All of these courses must be completed with a grade of C or higher.

Earth & Environmental Science Minor

This minor will give you a framework for understanding the Earth’s natural science systems and the environmental forces that shape human populations and society. Students will gain knowledge of fundamental concepts in the physical, life, and interdisciplinary natural sciences that inform society about the environment in which we live.

Environmental Analysis & Policy Minor

This minor will train you in the social sciences with a clearly defined specialization in the environmental field. You’ll learn about the social and institutional framework in which environmental and natural resource planning, management, and policy making take place. Students take classes in the natural and physical sciences to ensure they understand the biophysical basis of environmental issues.

Environmental Remote Sensing & GIS Minor

This minor will give you foundational knowledge of the methodology and uses of remote sensing. You will gain an understanding of how remote sensing is applied both scientifically and practically, and students gain hands-on experience analyzing spatial information using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Sustainable Energy Minor

This minor will give you a coherent suite of classes that reveals the interdisciplinary nature of energy studies. The curriculum includes the essential elements of energy from the business, economics, policy and engineering perspectives, as taught by faculty in those areas. The minor in Sustainable Energy is a collaborative effort among faculty in the Department of Earth and & Environment in the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Management, and the College of Engineering.

Requirements

The minor in Sustainable Energy consists of seven courses (26 credits), all of which must be completed with a grade of C or higher. The seven courses comprise four required principal courses, one required practicum, one required related course, and one elective course. You can find the full list of courses here.

The HUB: What, Where, How

Advising: Huh?

While you’re in our department, our goal is support you. You are assigned an academic advisor, who is part of our faculty, and they will be a resource for your academic needs.

Below are a list of responsibilities for both you and your advisor – we encourage you to be proactive AND know that your advisor should be available to you.

Student Responsibilities

Initiate Contact

If you have HAD either a Zoom or an in-person orientation or review with Sayaka Yamaki, you are expected to initiate contact with your faculty advisor(s) for scheduling, course changes, and other matters in a timely fashion. Because of teaching commitments, research, and travel obligations, advisors may not be available on short notice.

Be Prepared

You are expected to be prepared for each meeting; for example, you should bring their proposed course schedule and specific questions when meeting about course registration. HOWEVER: sometimes, you may simply not know what you should bring! That is completely normal. You can always reach out to your advisor to ask what is helpful to bring, or talk to Sayaka.

If for any reason you feel underserved in academic advising, you’re free to approach Undergraduate Program Coordinator Sayaka Yamaki or any faculty with whom you feel comfortable.

Faculty Advisor Responsibilities

Faculty advisors help students translate their academic interests into an appropriate course of study, offering general guidance related to academic majors, internships, graduate study, and career planning.

Faculty advisor responsibilities include:

Meeting with individual students (office hours/appointments) to provide guidance related to college and major curriculum requirements
Advising students on substitutions for required courses, and on the process for gaining approval for any deviation from curricular requirements
Providing guidance on College and University resources supporting students’ goals and challenges, e.g., Center for Career Development, BU Counseling, etc.

What to expect from your faculty advisor:

Advice. You should use your faculty advisor as a resource for planning your academic program, identifying academic and career goals, and general advice on graduate degrees and careers in the field! This means: what classes would be helpful for me? What classes should I NOT take? What books could I read? Sayaka can refer you to a tailored list of alumni to reach out to, to answer your career questions and to expand your professional network. She teaches advanced LinkedIn and networking help, since 70% – 85% of internships and jobs are found through connections!
Assistance and Referrals. Faculty advisors may provide general information about and referrals to special programs including study abroad, study abroad, the BA/MA program, UROP and other research opportunities, etc. They may also be helpful in obtaining tutoring services or evaluating transfer/advanced placement credit, as appropriate. Faculty advisors are often happy to provide letters of recommendation for scholarships, study abroad, employment, or graduate school.
Availability. You should expect to have ready access to their faculty advisors. Most faculty advisors set aside several hours each week for advising and will usually make appointments outside those hours if necessary!

Your advisor may not be helpful with:

Assessment of Effort or Study Time Required for Specific Courses. Faculty advisors may help you determine the appropriateness of a given course in your curriculum plan, but they cannot predict how difficult the course will be or how much effort or study time it will require for individual students.
Personal, Financial, or Housing Issues. You are people, with needs! You are encouraged to make their faculty advisors aware of problems that may interfere with academic progress, but faculty advisors are not trained to provide counseling for personal problems – they are not the best place for support in these matters. However, they can help refer you to resources. Please note: all of our faculty and staff are mandated reporters. This means that we are required to report incidents of sexual assault & harassment, physical violence, and discrimination. We want to help you, but please keep this in mind if you are not ready to legally report something.

Your faculty advisor may not have specific studying advice, but we deeply encourage you to reach out to them and to your peers for support!

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Michael Dietze currently serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) for Earth & Environment. The DUS works with students’ faculty advisors and with the Undergraduate Coordinator (Sayaka Yamaki), to assist current and prospective major students. Your faculty advisor will handle most advising issues but may referring students to the DUS for more unusual or difficult questions. The DUS’s functions include the following:

For unaffiliated students (people who have not yet declared their major):

Being available for meetings in order to provide information about the Major, pre-affiliation course selection, and the affiliation and transfer processes.
Serving as the public face of the Major at information sessions.

For affiliated students (those who have declared their major):

Ensuring that up-to-date degree requirements and course offerings are publicized to faculty and students.
Serving as the point person for student concerns/issues with advising and curriculum.
Advising students on substitutions for required courses, and on the process for gaining approval for any deviation from curricular requirements.
Signing administrative paperwork when the faculty advisor is unavailable (or in some cases the Chair).

Undergraduate Program Coordinator

Sayaka Yamaki is the Undergraduate Program Coordinator for Earth & Environment. She works with the DUS and other faculty to help support students and faculty with any questions about the programs. She works on:

Answering general questions about BU requirements, including the Hub, majors, minors, and affiliated programs.
Tracking students’ academic progress within the majors.
Assisting with college forms such as transfer credit applications, petitions, add/drop forms, etc.
Career advising: Sayaka usually organizes at least one Alumni Career Panel in the Fall, and an Environmental Career Fair every Spring. She can connect you to 1300+ BA, MA and PhD alumni, and help you clarify your career and/or graduate school goals.
Facilitating the course registration process each semester.
Serving as a point of contact when a student’s faculty advisor or the DUS is not available.
Being a resource to help students navigate BU to achieve success.

E&E Opportunities

We have a variety of opportunities in the Earth & Environment Department to get paid for your work, to deepen your research abilities, and practice teaching!

Learning Assistants: The LA Program helps you learn teaching methods and practices! As an LA, you assist professors with department classes and help your peers by providing them with knowledgeable and experienced peer educators. As with teaching anything, you often learn even more about the subject by helping others understand it. You can also reach out to specific professors to ask if they would like a Learning Assistant.
Lab Employees: Earth & Environment faculty occasionally hire undergraduates to work in their laboratories. Consult with faculty about available opportunities. You can receive academic credit OR be paid – but unfortunately, you can’t do both at the same time.

A Directed Study is a CAS course where you can undertake independent research under the guidance of a faculty member! You may choose to take a Directed Study to go into more depth on a specific subject or to explore a topic not normally covered in the curriculum. This process requires you to build a semester curriculum with a willing professor, but can be incredibly exciting and informative. To apply for a Directed Study, check out this link.
UROP: The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program engages students in faculty-mentored research projects. Through this program, you can design your own research project and receive funding through BU. You will need a mentor to get started – we highly recommend reaching out to faculty you admire!
Community Research: In EE 538, Research for Environmental Agencies and Organizations, you get to perform research tasks that assist environmental and public health officials in achieving their missions, sometimes continuing projects begun in previous semesters. You will work in teams, each taking a leadership role in one project, and a supportive role in others. Each week the class meets to review progress and to consider various strategies for addressing questions encountered. Team members communicate as needed with government officials, and end the class by presenting their work to them. The work is supervised by Richard Reibstein, lecturer in environmental law and policy, who spent 27 years as a state environmental official (part of the time as a federal environmental attorney).
Earth House: In an historic rowhouse on South Campus, the residents at 7 Buswell Street take part in a Living Learning Community, which integrates curriculum with student life and housing. At the Earth House, the very act of day-to-day living is the focus of inquiry and the physical Earth House facility is the shared focal object of examination. All of the things that students and teachers normally think of as being means to an end of education – eating, commuting, showering – are inverted and transformed in Earth House to become primary topics of inquiry.

Student Organizations

Resources Guide: On & Off Campus

Helpful Forms

Course Related

Add/Drop Form

Use this form to add and drop courses, or change a class section. To do so, you will need to have the professor of the section you would like to enroll in sign off on this form, indicating that they permit you to enroll in their section.

Course Substitution Form

Use this form to request to have a different course count for a degree requirement.

Permission to Audit a Course Form

The designation of “Audit” is a registration status used when students officially register for a class without earning a letter grade or credit.

Students may register for a class on an audit basis only when space is available and only with the permission of the instructor via a signed form. Students who receive permission to audit a course are expected to attend classes regularly and complete assigned readings. Other requirements regarding participation are to be agreed upon by the student and instructor. Please note, the last day to add courses with audit status or convert classes from credit to audit is the same date as the last day to add courses for credit.

Course Overload Fee Waiver

Fill out this form if you plan on overloading and would like to have the fees for each additional credit not covered by standard tuition waived. Please note, standard tuition covers up to 18 credits and this waiver covers up to 20 credits. In order to qualify for a waiver, you must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.30 or higher, or have completed at least 88 credits. If you have senior standing, you will automatically receive a waiver and do not need to submit this form.

Incomplete Grade Report

Students and instructors should complete this form (together) to designate a course incomplete. The form must then be submitted to the CAS Advising Office. Please note, all work for the reported incomplete will need to be completed by the date assigned, which must be within one calendar year of the end of the semester for which the incomplete grade is reported.

Transfer Course Pre-Screen Request

If you are a CAS student, fill out this form if you plan on taking courses at another accredited, degree-granting college, community college, or university in the United States and would like us to pre-screen your courses to see if they have already been approved for BU credit. Note, you can access the database that lists transfer courses that have previously transferred into Boston University, here. If you choose to check the database yourself, please still fill out this pre-screen form so that we can put the equivalency approval on file for you.

Directed Study Application

Fill out all three sections on the form with your supervising faculty member. Next, the Department chair’s approval is required. Applications submitted to CAS Academic Advising without a Department chair’s signature will be returned to the student.

The completed application should be submitted in CAS Academic Advising (100 Bay State Road, Room 401), where it will be reviewed by the Directed Study Coordinator. Upon approval, the student will be registered for the course by the CAS Academic Advising staff and notified of their registration via email.

All applications must be submitted to CAS Academic Advising no later than the last day to add a standard class for the semester in which the Directed Study will occur.

Request for Second Language Proficiency Evaluation

Students who are native speakers of, or have substantial knowledge of, a language other than English may meet the CAS Second Language Requirement by demonstrating appropriate proficiency, as determined by the College, in all skills relevant to the comprehension and production of that particular language. Except in the special cases, (e.g., American Sign Language) proficiency testing includes reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Class & Graduation

CAS Intent to Graduate

This form is required to officially apply for graduation. We recommend filling out this form one year prior to your intended graduation date. Please do not submit this form more than once. If you need to make any changes to your original submission, email your graduation advisor or casadv@bu.edu.

Change of Class Year for CAS Students

This form is to request a review of eligibility to change your current class year or to update your projected semester of graduation.

Part-Time Status Petition

Fill out this form to request permission to be enrolled in less than 12 credit hours within a given semester. International Students must consult with the International Student and Scholars office before submitting this form (888 Commonwealth Ave, 617-353-3565).

Majors & Minors

Major Declaration

This form is for current CAS students only. Fill out this form if you wish to make any changes to your major designation(s).

Application for Honors in the Major

Use this form to apply for Honors in the Major.

Minor Declaration

This form is for current CAS students only. Fill out this form if you wish to make any changes to your minor designation(s).

Who should I talk to?

Throughout your time here, you will likely have a lot of questions – and we’re excited to help answer them! Whether they are large, existential questions (How do I even try to have hope in the face of the climate crisis) or smaller-scale questions (Does this class happen in the Fall?), we want you to ask. Below you’ll find a list of who is who in the department, and their specialties.

Faculty Administration | Administrative Staff | Tenure & Tenure-Track Faculty | Research Faculty | Teaching Faculty

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