Environmental Monitoring & Analysis – (M.Sc.)

Contents

Strength and Breadth in Professional Competencies

This MSc will ensure you are equipped with knowledge of a wide range of research skills and techniques upon which you will rely in all areas of environmental employment or within subsequent fields of academic research. Modules like Field Techniques in Environmental Geochemistry, Laboratory Techniques and Geochemistry of the Primary and Secondary Environments will provide specific training in analytical and theoretical geochemistry and other core disciplines such as sampling, which are critical to the study and understanding of the environment. In addition, you will gain a grounding in understanding legislation, when you tackle The Water Framework Directive module regarding water quality. Such foundational skills are highly relevant to a career in environmental quality.

Professionally-Relevant, Specialist Dissertation

The single most significant project within the Master’s in Environmental Monitoring and Analysis is the dissertation. This is an authentic reflection of the investigative analysis which you will undertake as an employed graduate. By deploying the skills you will learn in semesters one and two, and by exploiting the array of technological tools at your disposal, your semester three dissertation will prepare you for real EMA work and the competitive field of the jobs’ market. Because you will have mastered systematic approaches to problem solving and developed your own repertoire of preferred investigative methods, your final project will prove your professional competence and employability which are integral to the successful outcomes of this Master’s Degree course.

Previous research dissertations have investigated metal loading and contamination in from abandoned metal mines, trace metal chemistry and fuel type of spheroidal carbonaceous particles, the geochemistry of urban sediments, and domestic water quality. Like these, your project will fall within an area of active research for the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences. Some past projects have been pilot studies which led on to PhD research projects; others were part of larger research projects within the IGES and involved all the MSc students in the research culture of the Institute. This engagement with professional-quality projects that contribute to the advancement of understanding is exactly what employers are looking for.