Merger creates new Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences
September 23, 2024
We are delighted to announce that we are now the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS)!
The Earth and environmental sciences have never been more important than they are today. The Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences will be key to training Northwestern students to address 21st century challenges.
Northwestern has had a popular interdisciplinary undergraduate major in Environmental Sciences since 1992, but students in that program have lacked a departmental home. The interdisciplinary major is now an offering of our department, and we warmly welcome nearly one hundred majors in that program to our growing community! We will also continue to offer our long-standing major in earth and planetary sciences and our cutting-edge PhD program – consolidating Northwestern’s teaching and research in Earth systems.
In the World Economic Forum’s 2024 rankings, the four largest perceived risks to human well-being over the coming decade were extreme weather events, critical changes to Earth systems, biodiversity loss, and natural resource shortages. Our faculty, staff, students, and postdocs are dedicated to understanding and addressing those challenges and more. We are proud of our timely research strengths in climate change and Earth’s carbon cycle, dynamics of Earth's interior, the evolution and diversity of life, and Earth and planetary materials. And we look forward to welcoming a new teaching-focused faculty member in 2025 who will help us support our talented and growing student community.