Total number of hours for program: 120.
A geology degree offers a rich, diverse educational experience while opening doors for meaningful careers in earth and environmental science. Geologists meaningfully contribute to solutions to many societal problems, such as finding new and useful earth resources, minimizing earth hazards such as landslides, securing clean water resources, restoring degraded streams and wetlands, learning how and why climate is changing today and in the past, investigating major extinctions in the past and present, recreating past tectonic events to gain insights on mountain belts and hazards today, and even looking beyond earth to study planetary bodies.
At Western, our students get experience actually doing geology, and are supported by faculty and fellow students in the classroom and lab, at our on-campus hydrological research station, and on many outdoor field trips. All geology majors get an internship-like research experience to solve a real-world geological problem and communicate their results to the professional community. Most alumni pursue geosciences careers, such as work in environmental fields, for government agencies, in K-12 education, and in energy resources. About one-quarter of alumni go onto graduate school for advanced degrees in the geosciences or in other professional programs.