Welcome!

Welcome to the Department of Environmental Studies at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), in Syracuse, near the state's beautiful fingerlake region and Adirondack Mountains. The Department offers undergraduate and graduate degrees and certificates in Environmental Studies, is the home of ESF's Writing Program, and supports ESF's interdepartmental Graduate Program in Environmental Science.

Our Environmental Studies programs integrate and balance the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences in a creative, interdisciplinary learning context focused on addressing contemporary environmental issues and problems, from local to global. Departmental faculty and students engage in research, creative work, and service throughout New York, across the United States, and around the world. The Department serves students, citizens, organizations, communities, and public and private institutions who want to make a difference in the world.

Environmental Studies at ESF

The mission of the Department of Environmental Studies is to advance knowledge of the social and cultural dynamics of ecological sustainability. It does so through interdisciplinary research and scholarship, teaching, and outreach focused on environmental policy, communication, and decision making, in productive interaction with the scientific community, government, business, non-governmental organizations and citizens, locally, regionally, and internationally.

The Department offers a variety of foundational, research, and professional degree and certificate programs including the Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Master of Science (M.S.), and Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.) in Environmental Studies; and graduate certificates in Environmental Decision Making, and on Advanced Study in Conflict Resolution. Doctor of Philosphy (Ph.D.) degrees supervised by departmental faculty are offered through the interdepartmental Graduate Program in Environmental Science; and Environmental and Natural Resources Policy program. Students benefit from the nearly century-long, close relationship between ESF and neighboring Syracuse University, including dual degree programs, use of libraries and other facilities.

All our programs aim to achieve:

• Multi/interdisciplinary approach: recognition of the necessity to approach environmental problems from multiple disciplinary and professional perspectives
• Holistic perspective: awareness of and deference to the interdependence of elements within broadly defined ecosystems, including physical, biological, social, cultural, and economic components
• Topical grounding: competency to understand and apply the principles of a particular subject of environmental inquiry in sufficient depth to interact with other disciplines and professional fields
• Realistic experience: through internships, focused projects, papers, theses, and seminars which provide for direct interaction with legal, economic, political, cultural, or social actors, institutions, and systems

Environmental Studies programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels draw upon faculty from across SUNY-ESF and emphasize interdisciplinary social science, humanities, and natural science approaches to environmental understanding and stewardship. The programs maintain a strong academic orientation, facilitating student and faculty engagement with fundamental environmental challenges and dynamics such as multiple and conflicting levels of environmental governance, participatory democracy, sustainable development, uses and limits of scientific prediction, discourses of environment, cultural expressions of nature, risk, and ecological sustainability.