Geography and the Environment (MA)
University of Texas at Austin
Description
Faculty and graduate students have contributed in many ways to understanding and managing earth’s diverse cultural and physical environments, ranging from local to global scales across the full range of human history. Current areas of faculty research include Space, Place, and Social Worlds; Environmental Changes and Surface Processes; and Digital Landscapes. The faculty has always had a strong international orientation and is well prepared to guide students in field based research in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the Southwestern and Western regions of the United States. The Department encourages interdisciplinary and collaborative work, taking advantage of the University’s extensive scholarly resources.
Students earning a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree from the department attain a level of expertise on an advanced topic situated within a broader foundation of geographic history, theory, and methods. The master’s degree is designed to be completed in two years and usually requires several semesters of coursework and completion of a master’s thesis. The thesis represents original research and commonly includes some combination of field, archival, and/or laboratory analysis. Many master’s recipients have continued on to the doctoral program. Other master’s recipients have found employment related to their graduate training in consulting, business, education, or government.