At UCSB
Strengths
The ten-campus University of California system is generally recognized as the world's premier public university system. In 1944, the third campus within the UC system was established in Santa Barbara.
UC Santa Barbara's rise within the ranks of great American research universities is a phenomenal success story. In a 1997 study by Graham and Diamond, UCSB was rated the #2 public university in the U.S., second only to another University of California campus (Berkeley), based on faculty productivity.
UCSB's international status and the eminence of its faculty are widely recognized. Among the faculty are five Nobel Prize winners including the most recent, Prof. Finn Kydland of the Economics Department. As a lead author for the UN'S Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Professor of Environmental Economics, Charles Kolstad, joined other IPCC participants in work that earned the group the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The pioneering accomplishments of our faculty demonstrate the importance of scholarly inquiry, a hallmark of research at UCSB.
Recognition of academic quality takes many forms. One of the most prestigious is support from the National Science Foundation. UCSB is home to nine national centers and institutes, including five that are sponsored by NSF. UCSB has long had strength in interdisciplinary inquiry, and this is reflected in the fact that NSF has established four IGERT graduate programs here, of which the EES Program is one. No American college or university campus has more IGERT programs than UCSB.
UCSB is located approximately 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles and is considered one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. The 989-acre campus is located atop a palm tree and eucalyptus-lined bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Local growth control limits the student body size to approximately 20,000 students, of which 10-15% are graduate students. Its distinguished faculty, diverse student body and high faculty-graduate student ratio make the campus ideal for graduate study.
Donald Bren Hall, home of the EES Training Program, was opened in April 2002. According to the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED accreditation program, it is the "greenest" laboratory building in the United States and one of the highest performance and most sustainable buildings constructed to date.
Environmental Economics at UCSB
UCSB's Economics Department has long had strengths in a number of fields related to environmental and resource economics. The Department's traditional strengths have been in public economics, labor economics, and other areas of applied microeconomics. In recent years, the department has also become strong in macroeconomics. In fact, one of the Department's macroeconomists won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics (Prof. Finn Kydland).
Environmental and resource economics has been a strength at UCSB since the 1970's, in part because of the close connection between the field and public economics. The leading journal in the field, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, was, until recently, edited at UCSB. Another leading journal, Resource and Energy Economics, was recently edited at UCSB. The new journal Review of Environmental Economics and Policy is co-edited here at UCSB. Additionally, UCSB Prof. Charles D. Kolstad, was recently President of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the leading international professional organization for the field.
The establishment of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in the mid-1990's resulted in the hiring of several additional environmental and resource economists. These new Bren environmental economics faculty, combined with Department of Economics faculty, has resulted in UCSB being one of the world's leading centers in environmental and resource economics.
UCSB is the host of the Occasional California Workshop on Environmental and Resource Economics, a forum for faculty and graduate students to present research in an informal setting. The workshop has been held every 12-24 months since the early 1990's and draws participants from all over western North America.
Environmental Programs at UCSB
Moderate climate and diverse terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems make UCSB an ideal place for the study of environmental sciences. As a result, the UC system placed its first graduate school for the environment on the UCSB campus in 1994. Currently, the Donald Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management graduates about 70 students from its professional master's program each year (and graduated its first Ph.D. student in June 2002). Because of its multidisciplinary nature, the Bren School strengthens UCSB's presence in the environmental sciences as well as environmental economics.
UCSB considers environmental research in general to be a priority for the campus. This is reflected in the number of educational programs on campus, including the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Program, as well as the number of highly ranked research units on campus, such as the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Several years ago Science Watch rated UCSB the #1 university in the United States in environment/ecology, based on citations to articles by faculty.
How can I prepare for a career in Environmental Economics at UCSB?
You can best prepare for a research career in environmental economics through PhD degree programs in either the Department of Economics or the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. Both the Department and the Bren School support the Environmental Economics and Science program, through which PhD students in either the Economics Department or the Bren School can supplement their training in environmental economics with added strength in areas of environmental science.