About the Climate Adaptation Science Program

Purpose

The Climate Adaptation Science specialization prepares trainees for research-based careers that integrate science, management, and policy to understand and adapt to a changing climate. 

Program Description

The Climate Adaptation Science program closely integrates research, work-place experience, and scientific collaboration between scientists, policy-makers, federal, state, and local land and resource managers, and citizen stakeholders. The program emphasizes interdisciplinary research and includes training in informatics, modeling, communication, leadership, project management, risk assessment, decision-making, and interdisciplinary teamwork.

While trainees acquire primary expertise in their discipline from their departmental major degree fields, they can then acquire additional expertise across a full range of climate-adaptation-related disciplines by working with a team of their peers to solve user- and stakeholder-driven problems related to a changing climate.

Trainees will complete a 9-credit degree specialization that includes both classroom and experiential elements. The required courses are an Introduction to Climate Adaptation Sciences seminar, an Interdisciplinary Research Colloquium course, two additional Studio courses, and a seminar course on Environmental Risks and Decision Making. Trainees may also choose to complete an internship with a government, industry, or NGO partner during this time. Please note that the specific course requirements have changed for students entering the program in Fall 2025 or later. Details are given in the Program Timeline. For details pertaining to the course requirements prior to Fall 2025, please use this link. 

Please note, at this time, only Utah State University graduate students in participating programs are eligible for this degree specialization program.

Internships (optional)
CAS students can complete a mentored internship with a government agency, NGO, or industry partner organization. Through these internships, trainees should aim to learn about the culture, opportunities, constraints, and science needs of the many workplaces in which climate adaptation science is created and used.

For current CAS trainees seeking monetary support for their internship, please complete this form and email it to the CAS program coordinator (Lexi Turano).

Skills Acquired
  • Collaboration across Disciplinary and Workplace Boundaries
  • Teamwork, as a Leader and Follower
  • Project Management
  • Risk Assessment
  • Decision-making
  • Communication with Scientist and Non-scientist Audiences
  • Reproducible Science
  • Comprehensive Thinking about socio-environmental issues

Team Research
CAS trainees collaborate with their cohort to define and execute a research project that advances our understanding of climate adaptation science. Over the course of two years, interdisciplinary cohort teams define their research problems, develop plans to address those problems, write and present formal research proposals, and complete the research. That work results in a variety of outputs, including technical publications and presentations of new knowledge for scientific audiences, but also materials for other users of science, such as interactive webtools, community plans, informational brochures or reports, publications in popular media, and public conversations and briefings.