Master of Science or Professional Science Masters in Coastal Zone Management - Virtual Information Session

Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll give everyone just a moment to get logged in, make sure your sound is turned on if you are joining us live. For those who are watching this pre recorded, I apologize as we wait just a moment for our audience to get logged in.

And we thank you so, so much for being here.

Great. Well, looks like we have everyone in, we'll kick off. My name is Jen Redwinski and I'm the Associate Director for Graduate Admissions here at Stockton University. And we're so happy that you're joining us for our virtual information system about our coastal zone management program here at Stockton. And So what I want to share with you all before I turn things over to our amazing program chairs is a couple of housekeeping items if you are watching this pre recorded. Thank you so much for taking the time to do so. We will share information, our contact information with you at the end of the presentation.

You have any questions for us, please don't hesitate to reach out, would be more than happy to assist If you're watching this live, there is a chat feature that you'll notice on the right hand side of the screen and so you are able to put questions in the chat to us as we go through. However, we would encourage you to wait to maybe ask some of those questions towards the end because more than likely we will get to your question throughout our presentation today. But we're very happy to take questions about the program, about the admission process and all of that at the very end. So without further ado, I am going to turn things over.

To our program chairs Doctor Khan and Doctor Pfeiffer Herbert.

Who are going to be telling you more about their program and why you should come to Stockton. So take it away, friends.

Oh.

Doctor Khan, you're on mute, but I'll introduce myself quickly. So I am Doctor Anna Pfeiffer Herbert and one of the Co chairs for the Coastal Zone Management program along with my Co Co chair. So Doctor Khan, you can go ahead.

Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Anna.

Hello, everyone. It's good to have you with us. And if you're doing this recording, we also welcome you to this presentation of our excellent program on coastal zone management. You must have read about it a bit. So we are going to talk about the program and also the degrees offered in the program and admission requirements or any other questions we may have.

So you must have read a bit about the coastal zone management program and what are the important things about it. We'd like to highlight two aspects of the program.

One is the natural resources, resources and livelihoods of the coastal regions that the program deals with.

And in terms of resources and livelihoods, you must know that fisheries energy.

Housing, recreation, tourism, these are the important aspects of natural resources and livelihoods in the coastal zone, but also cultural heritage and cultural ties. Those social aspects are also important in coastal management.

The other aspect is more of the physical nature of the coastal zone or demographic nature of the coastal zone, for example.

How climate change and sea level rise.

Are making changes in the coastal zone or creating stress on the coastal zone, population growth very unique to the coastal zone and coastal development, how those are creating pressure on the coastal zone or the coastal systems? Environmental pollution is particularly important in the coastal zone also. So if you think of these two aspects of the coastal zone that.

Make it a very unique situation and very complex one too.

Where we need an interdisciplinary knowledge and a holistic view, we are going to talk about that in a bit, but because of this complex nature and also a very unique situation.

The the Coastal Zone Management Act has been put in place in 1972, you know, to preserve, protect and develop and also to restore the resources of the coastal zone in the nation.

So that has been recognized for a while and in response.

What, among other professionals, the coastal managers do they they will need to have an integrated skill sets and knowledge.

Not only in the physical ecological.

Domain, but also the social domain, the engineering principles, policies and laws to address these complex problems that we.

Yeah, just described and.

With that, our program is actually designed in such a way to bring in these interdisciplinary knowledge and skill sets and also enable our graduates to have a have a holistic and complete view of the coastal zone that is required for coastal zone management for example.

Our graduates learn about physical sciences engineering principles.

The technology, coastal technology, but also biochemistry and ecology.

Social science, policy, law, those are all are all in the curriculum. If you get a chance you can look up our website to get a view of the curriculum.

With that very brief introduction of the program and you can ask us any any follow up questions about this, I hand it over to Doctor Pfeiffer Herbert for to talk about our program.

All right. Thanks, Doctor Khan. So I'm going to go into a little bit more detail of kind of what the program involves. So keeping in mind that someone working in a coastal zone management type profession needs to have that kind of big integrated holistic view that Doctor Khan mentioned.

Our overall goals for graduates of our program fall into three categories, so we expect that students will or graduates will be able to understand.

How the coastal zone works as a kind of natural system and that involves setting the physical, chemical, biological and geological processes.

We also, as was mentioned in our earlier slide, cannot separate the natural world from human systems and so understanding some of the social science aspects like how humans make decisions, how policies are made, what sorts of laws and regulation govern activities in the coastal zone is another key knowledge aspect.

And then the third aspect is skills to be a professional. So those would include written and oral communication skills, analytical or quantitative skills, and being able to work well in teams, all of which are necessary for approaching these really big and really interesting interdisciplinary problems.

So we have three different degree or one non degree option for students who are interested in taking our courses, and I'll begin with a Master of Science. So the Master of Science degree has a little bit less coursework than the next one that I'll mention, but it has a much more extensive research component. So students completing a Master of Science degree would take some core and elective coursework and work on an extensive thesis project which they would write into a written long written thesis and defend through an oral presentation to the program.

A Master of Science degree is a pretty traditional master's degree in academia, and this degree would be best for anyone who's considering continuing on with more academic research, possibly pursuing APHD, or going into careers that are very research heavy.

Our professional Science master's degree has a lot of overlapping courses and with some additional requirements for professional preparation, as well as a capstone project which is a one to two semester project that often is completed working with an outside partner. So students may work on an internship or or find some external partners in the field of coastal zone management to work on their project with.

Professional science master's degree is best for anyone who's looking into some applied careers in coastal zone management areas and are going to planning to kind of direct entry into those careers or additionally some professionals who are already working in those types of careers who would find it beneficial to get an additional credential to advance within their career.

And our third track is a certificate. So our certificate is not a Master's degree, It's coursework only, but it's an extensive coursework and still meets those 3 overarching program goals. So individuals who complete the certificate have a really nicely well-rounded background in the coastal zone field. So this is a really good option for working professionals who don't necessarily need a Master's degree, but the additional kind of knowledge base would be helpful for their career as well as.

Individuals who might be coming straight out of Bachelor's degree and want a little bit more coursework before they enter into.

A job that doesn't require a master's.

So those previous 3 tracks mentioned different combinations of core courses and electives. So there's a lot more information about this on both the Coastal Zone Management website as well as the Stockton course catalogues. But to give you a little bit of a sense of it, we have some 4 core courses that are taken by all students in all tracks. Students in the professional science masters take a couple additional required professional courses and then we have electives offered each semester.

Of a variety of different things to kind of round out the education. So listed on the side are a few examples. For example, the the photo that's in the upper right corner is from a hydrographic instrumentation and survey course. So the students are out getting some hands on experience with particular types of equipment that's used quite often for mapping sea floor habitats.

And I will hand it back to Doctor Khan to talk about some faculty and student research.

Thank you Doctor Pfeiffer. Albert, you you have heard about the courses and the requirements and the degree options. As a graduate student. You also have the opportunity to engage yourself in research and we have a wonderful faculty working in the program and you can see the main their main areas of research. But these are very brief and when you're interested, you can get in touch with them.

Directly to know more about their interest and research and see if your research interests match with this. So for example, some of our faculty are interested in more in the coastal systems or couple human natural systems or natural solutions for examples, but we also have faculty interested in.

The biological aspects of it or underwater mapping?

And Physical oceanography title. England Dynamics.

Trace metal geochemistry or coastal geology or sedimentary processes, even fish ecology, oyster reef restoration and seagrass ecology. So you can see from this list we have a faculty working in the program with diverse interest and very broad range of covering broad range of topics in the coastal zone management program. So that that may help you understand.

How you can plan your research.

Our students are doing wonderful research as well, so here are some of the examples they're working on currently working on are. One has completed their research already, others are working on them.

And close to their completion.

Some of the examples include.

Harbor seal food resource changes because of the wind farm.

In southern New Jersey or heavy metal contamination.

Or even looking at the horseshoe crab habitat and how the show protection structures or if at all they have changed the habitat.

Or coastal protection structures and their effectiveness. And one student is planning their research on sediment transport in the day lower base. So from these list you can also see the diversity and broadness of their research interest effort of the students in the program.

Why you should be interested in the program? I mean more looking at it more practically. And from this list, and which is not exhaustive, you can see the carrier opportunities after you graduate from the coastal Zone Management program. For example, you can be a scientist or a specialist, or you can also find your career as a project manager in main Science or Coastal protection or NGDP.

Some of our graduates are already working in U.S. Army Corps of Engineering.

They came to get their graduate degrees from the program. Also you can work with water quality or Environmental Quality monitor and coordinator.

Ecological.

Project manager or asteroid food webinar. So this is a long list and these are some of the potential carriers that we foresee.

After after you graduate.

So there's a good potential after you graduate to find your career.

OK. With that I I hand it back to Doctor Pfeiffer Harbor to talk a bit about the admissions criteria in our program.

Sure. Thanks. So, yeah, so again I will share the link to the graduate admissions website which has all of this information. But to give you an idea, those of you who are listening to this now or in the future, what it, what is the admissions process is like. So students coming into our degree program should have a bachelor's degree and ideally in an environmentally related major, so things like environmental science, marine science.

Biology, chemistry, physics, those sorts of degrees. Although what we really look for in admissions is not so much what the name of the major is, but whether you've had sufficient math and science preparation from an undergraduate program to be successful in our coursework. So if you have any uncertainty about that, feel free to reach out to us. For any of you that might be current or recently graduated Stockton students, there is a simpler application process that's called direct entry.

And so that has a 3.25 GPA threshold and you either need to be a current student or graduated within the last year. There's more information about that on the website. For all others, you would pay a $50 application fee and write your fill out an application form which includes a graduate essay. That essay, we really want to stress, is one of the most important things that we look at in addition to kind of that baseline preparation for the courses.

And in an essay, what we would like to see is an admissions committee is that you have a plan. So you are expressing why you're interested in doing a degree in coastal zone management. You have a general idea at least of kind of how this might help you along your career path. And for those applying for the Ms. degrees, so that would involve thesis research. We would also like to see in your essay some indication of what research area you are most interested in pursuing.

Play.

In addition to the essay, you will request 3 letters of recommendation and submit a resume and transcripts. We do not require GRE test scores, although if you did did take that for other applications, you're welcome to send those scores to Stockton and that would go in your packet. So again, if you have questions about admissions, if you are looking for ideas of research directions, feel free to reach out to either the Co chairs of the program or the Graduate Admissions office, including Jen.

And then we will wrap up with our, this slide has our contact information. I think Jen posted the website link within the chat for those of you listening live or you can either search or scan the QR code to get there. And again, feel free to reach out to any of the three of us at any point if you have further questions or we can answer some live questions right now if there are any.

Yes. Thank you both so much.

We'll give you a couple of minutes. If you do have questions, please feel free to type those in the chat if you're watching live. I'm also going to put an additional link in the chat with international graduate application information as well. I know that we have some participants who may be joining us from the international perspective and those timelines are a little bit different. In the transcript submissions are also a little bit different and I want to make sure that you have the contact information on how to go about doing that as well.

But the, you know, the rest of the application criteria is all the same. It's just the deadline. And then we do need to have a transcript evaluated by either Wes, ECE or Spantran, which are the international transcript evaluators. But we're happy to answer those questions as well. I just want to also thank both of you for taking the time to to share your wealth of knowledge and your passion for your program. It really means a lot and I really think that it comes across to our audience. And so thank you. Thank you for doing that.

I'm not seeing any questions in our chat, so I believe that means you've covered everything, so that's good.

But we'll leave our contact info on there. You can e-mail us at grad school, at stockton.edu. That goes to our full team here at graduate admissions and we can answer just about anything. And if we can't and it's very program specific, that's where we call on Shawn and Anna, and we're a great team together and making sure you all have everything that you need to be successful in creating your application.

So with that being said, that concludes our presentation today and we thank you all so much for joining us. I hope you have a wonderful day. Take care everyone. Bye, bye.

Thank you.