The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences offers both M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree programs. Graduate programs are based on research, although some courses are required to build the backgrounds of students. Research in the Department is wide-ranging, and includes:

studies of the geochemistry of the mantle;
the nature of processes concentrating metals in hydrothermal mineral deposits;
experimental studies of the controls of viscosity in magmas and the mechanisms of volcanic eruption;
the fate of carbon and trace metals in marine sediments;
the nature of changes in atmospheric and oceanic chemistry in the early and late Precambrian;
mechanisms of faulting;
the evolution of topography during orogenesis;
wetland hydrogeology;
interactions between the cryosphere, solid Earth, and climate systems;
planetary-scale ocean biogeochemistry (e.g., ocean acidification) and its relationship to global warming.