Michael Smith Natural Resources Building

Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology focuses on teaching students how to be good stewards of our natural resources and how to solve complex environmental problems. You’ll gain a strong foundation in the biological, physical, and social sciences with an emphasis on conservation and sustainability of wild animals and their habitats. A summer field course at CSU’s mountain campus provides students with hands-on learning about natural resource ecology and measurements.

Maybe you’ve always known you wanted to have a career that made an impact. Maybe you’re just now discovering that you can get paid to be a part of the solution to environmental stability. Either way, this major is designed to teach you about the challenges humans face in sustainably managing ecosystem services, as well as the amazing ways in which organisms interact with their environments to form complex ecosystems and cutting-edge solutions for sustainability.

This major prepares you to apply economic tools to evaluate natural resources and the management of our environment. By studying economic theory, you’ll gain an understanding of environmental issues and learn how to predict effects of government policies. You’ll work to explore solutions to pressing economic and environmental problems. In contrast to other natural resource courses, this major focuses on weighing the private and public implications of choices that we make on local and global scales.

Forest landscapes are always changing, sometimes very slowly as a result of long-term processes, followed by rapid changes as a result of fires or harvesting. Sustaining forests in the modern world requires people who understand these changes and how forests connect to global, ecological, and social systems. Colorado’s high-elevation grasslands, forests, and riparian areas provide the perfect backdrop for this area of study, and you’ll get plenty of chances to learn outdoors as you become a steward of the lands.

When you major in Environmental Horticulture, you’ll be moved by the earth’s rhythms and seasons much more than the 9-5. Environmental horticulturists create aesthetically pleasing, functional, and environmentally sound outdoor spaces. They design landscapes like golf courses, botanical gardens, and parks, and manage landscape design firms. In this major, you’ll round out your passion for plants with science- and business-based courses, and choose a concentration to focus on.

Geology offers both a specialized focus and a broad background in science, allowing for a wide range of career options at completion. Regardless of your concentration area, you’ll participate in labs and classes that largely take place out in the world, giving you hands-on experience that can be directly applied to careers and internships later on. Common careers include water, energy, and mineral jobs, geological hazards management, regulatory management, and education.

This major focuses on the understanding the social aspect of natural resources, as well as developing the skills to assess, plan and, implement strategies that lead to successful conservation. As an HDNR major, you’ll take science courses and do field work, but you’ll also become trained in thoughtful and professional communication, public speaking, and writing. You’ll come out with career opportunities that stretch from conservation to government policy, exploration to education, and beyond.

Travel lovers know the value in experiencing the world, and the Natural Resources Tourism major is designed for those who want to pursue this as a career. Two concentrations within the major help you design your dream job, offering courses in tourism management, marketing and planning, natural resources, studies abroad, and social science that will give you the skills for managing recreation and tourism enterprises. This major also is available online for transfer students. This major includes an accelerated option for students to graduate on a faster schedule.

Restore. Rehabilitate. Renew. In the Restoration Ecology major, you’ll learn to use active intervention methods and practice repairing and reviving natural areas while examining the science behind biological areas and ecosystems.

Water impacts every aspect of life from environmental stability to global political issues. The Watershed Science major is designed to give you a broad, scientific foundation in the study of water, how it moves across the land, and how different human activities affect water. You’ll come out with an array of job possibilities in the public and private sector, as well as skills to help preserve and protect earth’s most-important resource. The program capitalizes on its proximity to the Rocky Mountains, High Plains, and basins of Colorado to give students unique educational opportunities in outdoor laboratories.