A professional master's for people who will make decisions about a shoreline that is moving. Taught jointly by the policy and ocean science departments.
Coastal Resilience is a joint program between Marine Policy and Economics and Ocean and Earth Sciences, and the joint delivery is the substance rather than an administrative arrangement. The problem it addresses does not belong to either department.
A planner deciding what to do about a stretch of coast needs a sea level projection, an understanding of what the projection's uncertainty means, a grasp of what engineering can and cannot deliver, and a working knowledge of the regulatory and financial machinery that will decide what actually gets built. Programs that teach one of those produce graduates who are dependent on someone else for the rest.
Climate change and coasts, coastal community resilience, and coastal engineering design, with a capstone project taken on real terms for a real client wherever possible.
The recurring theme is uncertainty and what to do about it. Handing a planner a range and no guidance on how to use it transfers a scientific problem to someone with less capacity to solve it. Much of the program is about the alternative.
The same core can be taken as a graduate certificate by professionals already working in planning, emergency management or coastal engineering. The certificate is four courses and can be completed part time. Students often start on the certificate and transfer into the full master's.
Municipal and regional planning, state coastal programs, emergency management, consulting practice, insurance and infrastructure risk, and nonprofit work. A substantial share of students are already working in one of these and come back for the degree.
A mixed cohort, in discipline and in career stage, which is the most valuable feature of the program and the one that takes the first semester to settle.
Regional sea level, storm regime and coastal response — and how to present an uncertainty range so that it informs a decision instead of stopping one.
1What a coastal community can actually do about a changing shoreline, and why the barriers are usually financial and institutional rather than technical.
1Designing coastal protection for a shoreline that will not stay where it is, including the consequences that land in the next jurisdiction.
1.5Yes, for all students entering directly from high school. Transfer students are housed as space allows, and the waitlist usually clears by mid-July.
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Associate Professor of Climate Science
Professor of Marine Policy
The applied environmental degree, built around estuaries, water quality and the coast. It is the most interdisciplinary program we run.
