University of Montana Environmental Studies Program

Mission Statement

The Environmental Studies Program (EVST) seeks to provide students with the literacy, skills, and commitment needed to foster a healthy natural environment and to create a more sustainable, equitable, and peaceful world. To these ends, the EVST Program educates and challenges students to become knowledgeable, motivated and engaged in environmental affairs. We want our students to acquire the skills and awareness that will enable them to promote positive social change and to improve both the environment and communities of Montana, and thereby the lives of Montanans.

Statement of Prinicples

• Environmental studies require an interdisciplinary approach that integrates the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
• Creating solutions to environmental problems requires enterprise and performance as well as reflection; therefore, an effective environmental education generates thinkers who can do as well as doers who can think.
• It is important to provide both classroom and experiential learning opportunities in the arts and responsibilities of democratic citizenship including communication, collaboration, and committed civic participation.
• Students should be co-creators of their educational experience.

The University of Montana Environmental Studies Program participates in the selection of Wyss Scholars for Conservation in the American West. These scholarships are provided annually to graduate students in several disciplines - forestry, law, geology, philosophy, anthropology - and assure financial support to the best and brightest future conservationists of the west.