Applicable only to students admitted during the 2024-2025 academic year.

Environmental Science and Engineering

Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Graduate Degrees

The Institute of the Environment and Sustainability offers the Doctor of Environmental Science and Engineering (D.Env.) degree.

Admissions Requirements

Doctoral Degree

Advising

Upon entry to the program, each student is assigned a faculty adviser chosen to reflect the student’s expressed area of interest. The Chair of the D.Env. Graduate Program Committee (program chair) advises students in general terms and a specific program of study is planned in consultation with each student’s faculty adviser. Students are expected to meet with their adviser frequently regarding their academic program and degree progress. Ongoing evaluations of academic progress are made at the end of each quarter in courses completed toward degree requirements, grades in all course work, performance in the examination sequence, performance in the Solutions Course, and during the dissertation prospectus review. The program chair, the Graduate Adviser and the Graduate Program Administrator assist with policy and procedure and, when necessary, act to resolve any conflicts. Once per year students are evaluated during a spring review for degree progress. This evaluation by the program chair and faculty advisor assesses academic progress and identifies any matters that need attention.

Major Fields or Subdisciplines

Specialties within the program include (but are not limited to) the assessment and management of hazardous substances in the air, soil, and water environments; migration of contaminants in surface and groundwater; health risks of toxic substances; mitigation of adverse effects on the biological environment; restoration ecology; environmental assessment and modelling; life cycle assessment; and environmental economics. Students may also balance their work with a greater emphasis on either the science/engineering or science/policy side of their specialty.

Foreign Language Requirement

None.

Course Requirements

Course requirements consist of core courses, elective courses, environment and sustainability skill seminars, environmental science and engineering seminars, and solutions courses.

Core Courses. Thirteen courses from five categories are required. All core courses must be taken for a letter grade.

• Environmental Science (three courses). Courses that describe the characteristics of terrestrial, air, and water environments; the biota; the geological, biological, chemical, hydrological, and atmospheric processes of the environment; and the interrelationships between these compartments. Required courses: Environmental Health Sciences C240 or other toxicology course; C225 or C264 or other transport and fate elective; and one environmental science elective course.
• Environmental Engineering (three courses). Courses in engineering, mathematics, and the applied physical and life sciences covering topics such as modeling of environmental systems, fate and effects of environmental contaminants, design and evaluation of pollution control systems, plus courses that describe the tools and methods needed to address environmental problems, such as field and laboratory analytical methods, statistics, computer science, and advanced applied mathematics. Required courses: Civil and Environmental Engineering 153 (may be replaced with engineering elective if equivalent previously taken), and two engineering elective courses.
• Environmental Management, Law, and Economics (three courses). Courses that relate to the social and institutional factors relevant to environmental problem solving such as the development and implementation of regulations, dynamics of public participation, and socioeconomic analysis of current and historical trends in environmental and energy policy. Required courses: 1) one course from Environment 134, Environment 160, Public Policy C115/CM250, or Management 246, 2) Urban Planning M264A/B (same as Law 290) or Environment 205A/B/C, and 3) one environmental management elective course.
• Analytical Tools and Methods (four courses). Courses that introduce students to the tools and methods required for interdisciplinary research such as probability and statistics, decision analysis, life cycle assessment, geographical information systems (GIS), numerical analysis and experiment and survey design. Required courses: one statistics elective course, one big data course, one environmental monitoring course, and one additional analytical tool or method elective course.

Elective Courses. Three courses selected to provide depth in one area for students whose previous degrees emphasized disciplinary breadth or to provide additional courses in an area related to a student’s goals within environmental science and engineering. Elective courses are selected in consultation with the student’s academic adviser and must be approved by the program chair. All elective courses must be taken for a letter grade.

Credit for Prior Work. Entering environmental science and engineering students may already have completed some of the required course work in their undergraduate and graduate work. Three of the 13 core courses can be waived based on prior course work. Any other course requirement satisfied by previous work must be replaced with an elective in any field of environmental science and engineering that is pertinent to the goals of the student. Thus, a minimum of 13 core and elective courses must be completed after admission to the program. A minimum of 10 core and elective courses must be taken at UCLA or another University of California campus.

Environment and Sustainability Seminar. Courses that develop written and oral presentation skills. Students will take two courses, consisting of Environment 290 twice, or Environment 290 and another approved course that emphasizes scientific and technical writing.

Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar. While completing core and elective requirements, full-time students must attend the equivalent of two quarters of weekly seminars in the general area of environmental science and engineering, either by enrolling in seminar courses or by attending 16 separate departmental seminars each year.

Solutions Course. The Solutions Course, Environment 400, constitutes intensive multidisciplinary applied research directed toward the solution of a current environmental problem. Students are required to quantify and measure necessary parameters, perform critical evaluations, edit and process technical and socioeconomic information, meet deadlines, and communicate through a final report to the competent lay person as well as to the technical specialist. Sometimes two or three faculty from different academic disciplines oversee a team of student researchers. The student’s individual faculty adviser will assist the student is identifying a solutions course project.  Upon selecting a solutions course project, the student will nominate a doctoral committee. The doctoral committee will oversee the student’s progress in the solutions course project.

Before proceeding to the solutions course, students must have completed eight of the required core courses, successfully passed all core and elective courses taken (B- grade or better) and maintained a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 for all classes taken after entering the Environmental Science and Engineering Program. A total of 24 quarter units of Environment 400 (eight units per quarter) must be completed during the three quarters prior to advancement to candidacy. Enrollment in more than one solutions course per quarter is not allowed. No more than eight units of other course work may be taken when enrolled in a solutions course.

Normally, solutions course credit is only earned from ENV 400 offered through the Environmental Science and Engineering Program. Students may, however, petition the faculty for permission to earn solutions course credit through multidisciplinary environmental projects offered in other departments at UCLA.

Teaching Experience

Not required.

Field Experience

Residency

After advancement to candidacy, students begin a residency in their field of interest at an outside institution. Arrangements for the residency are the students’ responsibility but program faculty will assist. Beginning in the first year, the student’s faculty adviser will assist the student in identifying potential residency opportunities. Upon their appointment, doctoral committee members also assist the student in identifying and obtaining a residency position. The host institution and the nature of the appointment must be approved by the doctoral committee and the program chair. Supervision during the field training experience will be by the doctoral committee and the field program supervisor. A letter of agreement between UCLA and the institution is required. During each academic quarter of residency, the student must register at UCLA for eight units of Environment 599. The length of the residency period depends upon the nature of the residency and the needs of the student’s research, but typically lasts between 18 to 24 months, with a maximum of 24 months (6 quarters).

Written and Oral Qualifying Examinations

Academic Senate regulations require all doctoral students to complete and pass university written and oral qualifying examinations prior to doctoral advancement to candidacy. Also, under Senate regulations, the University Oral Qualifying Examination is open only to the student and appointed members of the doctoral committee. In addition to university requirements, some graduate programs have other pre-candidacy examination requirements. What follows in this section is how students are required to fulfill all of these requirements for this doctoral program.

All committee nominations and reconstitutions adhere to the Minimum Standards for Doctoral Committee Constitution.

A two-tiered examination sequence, consisting of the Departmental Written Qualifying Examination and the University Oral Qualifying examination, is required for advancement to candidacy to the D.Env. degree. The examinations must be successfully completed before the residency can begin. The purpose of the examinations is to test the student’s understanding of the core and breadth areas, current issues in the environmental field, and subjects covered in students’ solutions course experience. The Departmental Written Examination is administered by the doctoral committee in the first quarter of the solutions course. The Departmental Written Examination may be repeated once. The University Oral Qualifying Examination is administered by the doctoral committee at the conclusion of the solutions course research project. Generally, the doctoral committee is appointed during the second year of the student’s tenure at UCLA at the start of the solutions course. The doctoral committee may be reconstituted with the approval of the Division of Graduate Education in the event that the dissertation topic differs significantly from the solutions course topic. The oral examination may be repeated once.

Advancement to Candidacy

Students are advanced to candidacy upon successful completion of the written and oral qualifying examinations.

Every doctoral degree program requires the completion of an approved dissertation that demonstrates the student’s ability to perform original, independent research and constitutes a distinct contribution to knowledge in the principal field of study.

Dissertation Prospectus Review

In the third year of the program (first year of the residency) the candidate is required to present a written prospectus of the dissertation before the doctoral committee. In this review, the doctoral committee assesses progress and provides the candidate guidance on the dissertation research plan.

Final Oral Examination (Defense of the Dissertation)

Required for all students in the program.

Time-to-Degree

Well-prepared students who hold strong baccalaureate and master’s degrees should be able to complete the requirements for the D.Env. degree in 13 to 15 quarters, including the residency period.

DEGREE	NORMATIVE TIME TO ATC (Quarters)	NORMATIVE TTD	MAXIMUM TTD
D.Env.	6	16	24

Academic Disqualification and Appeal of Disqualification

University Policy

A student who fails to meet the above requirements may be recommended for academic disqualification from graduate study. A graduate student may be disqualified from continuing in the graduate program for a variety of reasons. The most common is failure to maintain the minimum cumulative grade point average (3.00) required by the Academic Senate to remain in good standing (some programs require a higher grade point average). Other examples include failure of examinations, lack of timely progress toward the degree and poor performance in core courses. Probationary students (those with cumulative grade point averages below 3.00) are subject to immediate dismissal upon the recommendation of their department. University guidelines governing academic disqualification of graduate students, including the appeal procedure, are outlined in Standards and Procedures for Graduate Study at UCLA.

Special Departmental or Program Policy

A recommendation for academic disqualification for a student who is not advanced to candidacy is made by the program faculty. A recommendation for academic disqualification for a student who is advanced to candidacy is made by the doctoral committee. A student may appeal a recommendation for academic disqualification to the Environmental Science and Engineering Faculty Advisory Committee. In addition to the standard reasons outlined above, a student may be recommended for academic disqualification based on the inability to communicate (in writing or orally) as required for success in the program area.