The elective courses cover topics such as environmental and urban design, environmental health risks, urban planning, behavioral epidemiology, demography, urban and regional analysis, technological hazards and change, international environmental policy, environmental psychology and geographic information systems. The normative time for completion of the Ph.D. requirements is four to five years. Students are expected to become involved in researchactivities in their first year of graduate study. In addition to course work, students complete a supervised research project before they begin work on their doctoral dissertation. The research project must be evaluated and approved by a committee of three faculty members.
Students complete the breadth requirement during their third year of study.
The breadth requirement consists of submitting a major paper or series of papers that intensively examine a specific substantive problems and bodies of research. A multidisciplinary perspecitive is preferred for breadth papers. These breadth papers are reviewed by the committee of three faculty members. The fourth and possibly fifth years of study are devoted to advancing to candidacy by developing and defending a dissertation proposal and completing the thesis through conducting dissertation research followed by a defense of the thesis. In common with the doctoral program in EHSP, training focuses on the integration of natural and social science knowledge for the promotion of human health within a sustainable ecosystem.