Academics at ESF: Undergraduate Minors
Water Resources Minor

Coordinators: Dr. Kim Schulz (EB) and Dr. Chuck Kroll (ERE)

Water resources is a multi-disciplinary field that integrates the physical, geochemical and biological processes of the water cycle and their application to management of water resources, water policy, and human dimensions of water quality and quantity. The interdisciplinary minor in water resources is designed as a flexible program for undergraduate students to study and integrate principles of physical hydrology, geochemistry, aquatic and terrestrial ecology, natural resources management, and environmental policy. The minor can include courses in the Departments of Forest and Natural Resources Management, Environmental Resources Engineering, Environmental and Forest Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Studies, as well as relevant courses at Syracuse University. The minor comprises 15 credit hours total that must be distributed across three departments at minimum (i.e., course numbers with three separate prefixes), with the intent of covering a breadth of disciplines. These courses must include at least one foundation course, either FOR 442 Watershed Ecology and Management, or EFB 424 Limnology: Study of Inland Waters. Courses taken for the minor can also count toward students' majors or other academic requirements, subject to those other program guidelines. Students are responsible for meeting the prerequisite requirements for individual courses, as applicable.

Admission to this minor requires that a student from any ESF program has a cumulative grade point average of 2.70 or better after one semester at ESF (or as a transfer student with same GPA).

Required foundation course; students must take at least one of these:

Required Courses

Approved elective courses that count toward the minor include the following, subject to availability and pre-requisite requirements. Other relevant courses may be petitioned. Note that some ERE elective courses may require prerequisites, such as calculus, chemistry, and programming; students who are interested in these courses should consider taking the engineering sections of their calculus sequence.

Fall Courses

Spring Courses

Approved Syracuse University courses