Graduate Studies in Earth & Planetary Sciences

The Graduate Program in Earth & Planetary Sciences is designed to provide a challenging yet fostering educational atmosphere that encourages independent and critical thinking, the development of communicative and teaching skills, and the performance of creative and original research.  It is the intent of the Program to train competent and technically adept geoscientists for careers in education, government, industry, and the service sector.  Interdisciplinary research/study with other physical, biological, anthropological, and engineering sciences is highly encouraged to provide the student with the broadest possible means to explore the limits of geological and geophysical knowledge. 

Program Description
Students admitted to the Graduate Program join an active and growing Department that offers challenging instruction in an unusually diverse research environment.  The Program grants both Ph.D. and M.S. degrees to full- and part-time students.  Nearly all full-time graduate students are supported by fellowships, teaching assistantships, and/or research grants. Faculty grants and university funds provide students with additional support for study and research during school year and summer, as well as participation at regional and national conferences.

The Graduate Program and diverse faculty at Rutgers provide a wide array of potential areas of study.  Our primary areas of research are Volcanology, Marine Geology, Basin Analysis, Paleoceanography, Biogeochemistry, Quaternary Studies, and Regional Tectonics.  We offer graduate certificate programs in Quaternary Studies and Engineering Geophysics.

Shared faculty, research and facilities with Rutgers’ Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, as well as with departments of Anthropology, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Chemistry, and Physics offer additional means of study and research possibilities.  Facilities and resources at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the American Museum of Natural History, are a few of the many nearby Northeast research resources. In addition to course work at Rutgers, students can take advantage of listings at nearby Princeton and Columbia universities.

Graduate student research projects can take full advantage of the region's diverse geology as well as part of numerous ongoing research projects worldwide. Precambrian crystalline rocks, the Appalachian Paleozoic fold and thrust belt, Triassic-Jurassic rift basins, the Mesozoic-Cenozoic coastal plain, and the shoreline of the Atlantic all offer excellent possibilities for exploration. 

Active field research in East Africa and Central America with associated laboratory studies provides unique opportunities for students to focus on various projects in volcanology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, as well as anthropological and archaeological related studies.  Active meteoritic research allows study of earliest solar system history.  Diverse examples of research areas include projects in the Canadian Maritimes, the Basin and Range of Idaho, the volcanic zone of Central America, Antarctica, Iceland, the East African rift system, Atlantic offshore basins, the Newark Basin Drilling Project, the Hawaii Scientific Drilling Project, the Coastal Plain Drilling Project, as well as on archival DSDP and ODP core materials.