Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

Undergraduate Program

DEEPS is well known for its top-quality undergraduate program and is rated among the best research departments in the nation.

We encourage students of all backgrounds to learn more about how the land, water, and air around us directly affect our lives, whether by taking one course, or several, or a concentration program with independent research. Our department is known on campus for being open, friendly, and uniquely down-to-Earth. With approximately 30 faculty, 60 undergraduate concentrators, and 60 graduate students, classes are comfortably small, and faculty, graduates, and undergraduates interact frequently. The success of the undergraduate program is evidenced by the demand for Brown graduates in top-notch graduate programs across the nation.

DEEPS is one of the most active in developing and providing First Year Seminars, which emphasize interdisciplinary pursuits that reach beyond the physical and biological sciences into the humanities and social sciences. These freshman seminars offer such varied course topics as Global Environmental Change; Patterns in Nature, in Society; Volcanoes: Windows Into the Deep Earth; and Monsters of the Abyss: Oceanography & Sea Tales.

DEEPS courses are uniquely suited to providing in-depth, hands-on learning opportunities about the natural world. Everything students discuss in class exists just outside the classroom.
DEEPS provides a highly collaborative learning environment that emphasizes process-oriented, hands-on approaches in the classroom, in labs, and on field trips.
The DEEPS faculty conduct internationally recognized research at the forefront of their fields. Undergraduate students participate actively in this research through independent research projects or employment involving field work, laboratory experiments, or theoretical computer modeling.
DEEPS offers students opportunities for diverse learning opportunities beyond the classroom, including field trips, laboratory exercises, and special events.
Undergraduates from around the nation are invited to come to Brown University this summer to engage in cutting-edge research in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences.