Southern Oregon University
AC-4: Graduate Program

The North American Association for Environmental Educators accredited program provides a unique opportunity, as you will design an environmental education program from the ground up, to be implemented as your culminating experience – Fall in the Field. Based on the cohort model, our program prepares students for a wide range of teaching and leadership positions with nature centers, museums, schools, government agencies, and many others.

Graduates will understand the use of natural resources, including:
-The relevant ecology. Only an understanding of the ecology behind an issue can permit an objective evaluation of the issue.
-Various methods of resource extraction. An environmental educator needs to understand various management techniques and their alternatives.
-The environmental impacts related to each of the extraction methods.
-Management practices for sustained use.

Graduates will be knowledgeable about the field of environmental education, including:
-Awareness of Environmental Education professional organizations and their journals
current trends in the field
-The history of Environmental Education

Graduates will have a variety of skills useful for teaching environmental education, including:
-Developing age-appropriate activities
-Developing a place-based curriculum
-Designing a guided walk
-Developing interpretive signage
-Assess EE programs using a variety of informal and formal techniques
-Be knowledgeable of a variety of EE programs such as Project Wild, Project Wet and Project Learning Tree
-Write successful grant proposals
-Be knowledgeable on state and national teaching standards in science and other areas related to environmental education including Social Science and Mathematics and use these when designing curriculum.

The Environmental Education graduate students design and deliver the Fall in the Field program as their culminating, capstone experience. The program is redesigned annually by each new cohort of students. The Fall in the Field program includes both a residential program at our field station, Deer Creek Center for Field Research and Education, and a non-residential program at the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The Fall in the Field programs explore the natural history and ecology of the region through hands-on experiences and are aligned to state education standards.

The Master's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies is designed to combine the theory and practice of several strands or disciplines of inquiry originating in a variety of other academic areas, such as the social sciences, sciences, humanities, education, and business. These degrees provide an opportunity for substantial academic preparation and advanced mastery in interrelated areas of study that have the power to stimulate multidimensional views of complex knowledge. Students in these graduate degrees build multifaceted competencies, creative practices, and broadminded perspectives that may reach across a select range of discourses and experiences. The multidisciplinary structure of these programs provides a flexible curriculum of coursework suitable to the stimulation of participants' continued intellectual growth, personal satisfaction, and career advancement in evolving fields relevant to the challenges of life, work, and learning in diverse settings of the twenty-first century.

The micro-credential in sustainable food systems prepares students entering into food system-related careers to better understand sustainable systems utilized in production, distribution, processing, sales, and waste reduction.