Environmental Studies Research
As an environmental studies major, you'll have the opportunity to dig into research opportunities across a wide range of disciplines. You'll work closely with faculty mentors, from field and lab work to presentations and publications. You might present your own research at the Cornell Student Symposium.
Many research projects take place in the summer as part of our Cornell Summer Research Institute (CSRI), but Cornell's One Course At A Time schedule also enables meaningful work to occur during your 8 block academic year.
Student-faculty research projects include:
Cornell faculty sponsor a number of on-going research projects, allowing students to work collaboratively and build on results over time.
- Role of women in sustainable agriculture in India
- Species diversity and plant-animal interactions in tropical rainforests
- Calculating food waste at Cornell College
- Conservation ecology of threatened monarch butterflies in tall-grass prairies
- Impact of warming on boreal forests
- Ecology and evolution of fire corals in the Bahamas
- Reconstructing the number of Australian hurricanes over recent millennia
- Population biology of endangered flying foxes in Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands
- Climate change effects based on comparisons of modern and ancient coral
- Mitigating nuclear waste
- Dye-sensitized organic solar cells
- Wind potential and energy maps for turbine development
- Prehistoric monsoon rainfall variations across the Indo-Pacific
Faculty specialties
- Marty Condon: species diversity of the tropics
- Rhawn Denniston: prehistoric climate changes
- A’amer Farooqi: global environmental economics
- Glenn Freeman: writing inspired by natural places
- Alice Ganzel: environmental psychology
- Leslie Kathleen Hankins: wilderness arts, (photo)journalism, literature, meditation
- Tammy Mildenstein: endangered species conservation
- Brian Nowak-Thompson: soil and water chemistry
- Mary Olson: environmental sociology and social justice
- Craig Teague: developing new methods for capturing carbon dioxide
- Emily Walsh: sustainability of geologic resources
- Jim White: environmental ethics