Curriculum

Advisement

After admission to the PhD program but prior to enrolling, prospective students will be encouraged to meet with the program director and faculty in order to refine the statement of research interest and identify an appropriate faculty mentor. If the entering student has not self-selected a faculty mentor based on research interests, then the program director will assume the role of the “temporary” advisor to the student. In his role as a temporary mentor, the program director will advises the student in selecting a course of study that supports the student’s goals and objectives and serves as a resource for the student as she or he progresses through the initial stages of the program. Once a student has developed a research focus, the program director, will help the student in identifying her or his research advisor, who will then assume the mentoring functions. Prior to completion of core courses, the student, in consultation with her or his mentor, will select a dissertation committee (see the section on the dissertation below). This committee will support the direction and advising of the student as well as development and administration of qualifying exams and dissertation defense.

Degree Requirements
The major milestones for the degree program include:

• Identification of a Chair of the Dissertation Committee (Dissertation Advisor)
• Identification and approval of a complete Dissertation Committee
• Active participation in a research group activity (research course)
• Completion of core courses
• Qualifying examination administered by Dissertation Committee
• Defense of dissertation proposal
• Dissertation research
• Completion of other required courses
• Admission to candidacy
• Submission of at least one manuscript for publication
• Dissertation defense
• Dissertation approval

Coursework

Students with a bachelor's degree will need to take a minimum of 72 semester hours for the Ph.D.: 12 semester hours of core courses, 6 semester hours of research preparation courses, 6 semester hours of research colloquium, 18 semester hours of elective coursework, and a minimum of 30 semester hours of dissertation research. This course of study is entirely consistent with Ph.D. programs in environmental management offered by other US Universities. Up to 12 credits of previous graduate work may be applied towards the doctoral program when appropriate. The program director and faculty mentor, in consultation with incoming students will determine which previously earned graduate credits will be accepted, with final approval of the Graduate Dean. All students are required to take the core courses unless they can demonstrate previous graduate work that is substantially similar. Prerequisites for all courses listed as core courses, or approved as electives, must be met prior to enrolling. After a course of study has been determined for the student, undergraduate and graduate transcripts will be evaluated to determine if other courses need to be taken in addition to the program requirements.

Core Courses

The program is organized around a set of core courses that are designed to foster intellectual inquiry and scientific reasoning, as well as to provide the breadth of natural and social scientific background needed to approach interdisciplinary environmental management research topics. These courses focus on the principles of environmental management and natural science using actual environmental problems to initiate the development of problem-solving skills for improved understanding. These core method and decision-making courses focus on the development of skills necessary for logical reasoning, problem solving and decision-making within the environmental fields.

Required Core Courses (12 semester hours – Full course descriptions in Appendix VI)
ENVR 770	Earth Systems Science
LSLW 590	Environmental Law and Policy
BIOL 570	Ecology
ENVR 760	Organizational Environmental Management

Elective Courses

Beyond the core courses, students select, in consultation with their faculty advisor and program director, an elective course of study relevant to the student’s professional and research interests. The range of doctoral elective courses relevant to Environmental Management comes from a broad spectrum of disciplines, including, but not limited to: anthropology, biology, chemistry, economics, environmental studies, geography, geology, legal studies, management, marketing and mathematics. These courses allow students to examine subject matter relevant to environmental management in much greater depth than the broader core courses and develop strengths in an area of environmental management appropriate to their interests.

Students entering with no prior graduate work must complete 18 semester hours of elective courses and satisfy all prerequisites of the core and selected elective courses. Any of these courses, or other relevant courses, may be transferred from prior graduate work up to a maximum of 12 total credits with approval of the program director and faculty mentor. The student and advisor, with the approval of the program director, prepare a work program (courses, research, responsibilities to any assistantship, etc.) outlining the elective courses that best fit the student’s goals.

The following list presents those courses offered at Montclair State University that support the doctoral program; other courses at the University may also be selected if appropriate and approved by the advisors and Program Director. Suggested elective courses are organized thematically into management and social science courses, physical science courses, and method courses. Program courses are available to Environmental Management doctoral students on a regular basis, in cooperation with the departments in which the courses are taught, to ensure timely progress toward degree completion. For example, a commitment was secured from the School of Business to allow Environmental Management students to take MBA courses (which are normally open only to MBA students). Doctoral students enrolled in courses that also allow enrollment of Master’s students (e.g. 500 level courses) will be assigned additional work (e.g. research, papers, readings, etc.) and be evaluated with higher expectations. All courses listed are 3 semester hours. Note: Students must meet the prerequisites for those elective courses that require them. (Full course descriptions are given in Appendix VI.)

A. Management and Social Science Courses

CNFS 510	Environmental Impact of Recreation on Natural Areas
ECON 501	Economic Analysis
ECON 508	Economics of Public Management
ECON 544	Government and Business
ENVR 508	Environmental Problem Solving
ENVR 509	Environmental Change and Communication
ENVR 551	Natural Resource Management
EUGS 603	Reading Seminar in Geography and Urban Studies
GEOS 509	Water Resource Management
INBS 501	International Business: Concepts and Issues
INBS 511	Issues in International Management
INBS 520	Managing the Global Workforce
MGMT 510	Human Resources Management

B. Physical and Biological Science Courses

BIOL 532	Advanced Entomology
BIOL 550	Topics in Microbiology
BIOL 553	Microbial Physiology
BIOL 571	Physiological Plant Ecology
BIOL 572	Wetland Ecology
BIOL 573	Shoreline Ecology
BIOL 574	Behavioral Ecology
BIOL 586	Tropical and Temperate Marine and Aquatic Ecology (Field Research)
BIOL 595	Conservation Biology
CHEM 534	Chromatographic Methods: Theory & Practice
GEOS 501	Air Resource Management
GEOS 525	Environmental Geoscience
GEOS 530	Paleoecology
GEOS 552	Applied Groundwater Modeling
GEOS 554	Waste Management
GEOS 560	Advanced Marine Geology
GEOS 571	Geophysics
GEOS 575	Geochemistry
GEOS 5XX	Environmental Methods and Instrumental Analysis
HLTH 502	Determinants of Environmental Health
HLTH 565	Foundations of Epidemiology
PHMS 565	Tidal Marsh Ecology
PHMS 581	Coastal Geomorphology
ENVR 7XX	Advanced Environmental Geochemistry

C. Methods

(Students must complete at least one course from this section)

ENVR 610	Seminar in Environmental Management
ENVR 655	Advanced Environmental Remote Sensing and Image Processing
ENVR 775	Modeling in Environmental Science
EUGS 680	Spatial Analysis
EUGS 770	Advanced Geographic Information Systems
STAT 541	Applied Statistics
ENVR 721	Research Methods

Research Requirement

Doctoral dissertation research requires the student to demonstrate the abilities to question, discover, integrate, apply, communicate and disseminate knowledge at the highest standards. The research component of this program is uniquely structured to provide students an opportunity to develop many of these needed skills prior to initiating independent dissertation research. An incoming student will be exposed to a research environment right after enrollment via participation in an Environmental Management research colloquium where they will get to hear and interact with the best scientists in their areas of interest, as well as get an opportunity to present their own research experience. Prior to admission to candidacy and initiation of dissertation research students are required to take a six credit, two-semester course titled Research Project in Environmental Management that trains the students on the fundamentals of doctoral research, starting from brainstorming potential research ideas to developing them into viable research projects. Following successful completion of the Part-I (development of a research proposal) and Part-II (implementing part of the research proposal to generate a research report) of the two-semester course, a minimum of 30 semester hours of dissertation research will be required for the degree. Students are required to participate in the Research Colloquium every semester; a maximum of 6 hours will be applied to the degree.

ENVR 895	Research Project in Environmental Management I (3h)
ENVR 896	Research Project in Environmental Management II (3h)
ENVR 704	Special Topics – Colloquium in Earth and Environmental Studies (1h x 6 = 6h minimum)
ENVR 900	Dissertation Advisement (3h x 10 = 30h minimum)

Dissertation

Each doctoral dissertation in the Environmental Management program addresses an environmental problem in an integrative, transdisciplinary, original and unique manner. The dissertation must include the discovery of new knowledge relevant to the environmental question, integration of new and prior knowledge and finally synthesis of this knowledge to the analysis of the question. The dissertation must communicate the discovery, integration and application effectively in a form that can be readily disseminated to the environmental management community and must yield several manuscripts for peer reviewed journals.

A wide range of dissertation topics is possible in the field of Environmental Management. Given the wide variety of faculty expertise available, research involving transdisciplinary approaches to local, national or global environmental problems and issues is expected. Although the management aspect will be integral to the research projects, students will not be allowed to pursue research that entails proprietary information, hence, cannot be released for publication.

Students will select a principal research advisor, and then, in conjunction with the advisor, a dissertation committee to help develop a research proposal prior to completion of coursework. The dissertation committee will be chosen to reflect the transdisciplinary nature of the research. The Ph.D. program will require participation of an external (outside Montclair, outside academia) professional member (e.g., industry professionals, regulatory agency personnel) in the advisory committee to ensure the student’s exposure to “real-world” environmental management scenarios. Committee members from outside the university must be approved according to existing Graduate Council policy. The research proposal must be presented and defended as part of an oral qualifying exam before the student’s dissertation committee. Following acceptance of a research proposal, the student will register for a minimum of 3 credits of dissertation research with their principal research advisor for consecutive semesters until the dissertation is defended. A public defense of the dissertation must be completed in accordance with current Graduate Council policy. The dissertation chapters will be developed in appropriate manuscript format for submission to leading national/international peer-reviewed journals within the discipline.

Transfer of Previous Graduate Credit

A maximum of 12 prior graduate credits, 1/6 of the total required for the degree, may be accepted towards the requirements of this program. No course in which the student earned lower than a B grade can be accepted for credit. Only courses taken at the 500-level (graduate courses) or above may be transferred into the program. The faculty mentor assigned to each student and the program director will determine which credits can be transferred. Transfer of credits follows the Graduate Policy Manuals policies and procedures approved for doctoral programs by the Graduate Council.

Residency

The program’s structure and advisement practices ensure that all students make continuing and regular progress toward their degree. As such, students must complete all core courses (12 core course hours, 6 hours of research seminar, 6 hours of research preparation) and elective courses (minimum 18 semester hours) within the first 3 years following matriculation. Following completion of core courses and after passing the comprehensive examination, a minimum of 30 credits of dissertation research must be completed within 3 years. Once research has started, the student will complete a minimum of 3 credits of research each fall and spring semester until the dissertation is successfully defended. Doctoral program policies approved by the Graduate Council require a year of full-time residency, defined as registration for 9 credits per semester. For a student with a graduate assistantship, full-time study is 9 semester hours per semester. An alternative planned experience, outlined by the graduate advisor and approved by the program director and the College Dean, may fulfill the residency requirement. Participation in a research community as described above is an example of an alternative experience. The immersion in a preparatory research project for a year with regular peer and mentor support and feedback satisfies the intent of residency.

Retention

Students will be expected to maintain an overall 3.3 (out of 4.0) grade point average in all courses. Students must take a written qualifying exam appropriate to their course of study after completion of the core courses. This exam is developed and graded by the students’ dissertation committee. Students also must pass an oral examination and defend their research plans prior to starting research. After finishing the remaining coursework, the student will gain admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree. Once research has started, students must register each fall and spring semester for a minimum of 3 credits of dissertation research. Research credits can also be acquired during the summer semesters; full-time students will be expected to continue their research activities in summer.