APU faculty know that witnessing nature’s complexities is the best textbook of all

At Alaska Pacific University, your Environmental Science Department believes that to understand nature’s interlocking systems, sometimes you just have to lie on your belly and watch.

That’s how Professor Roman Dial likes to teach field-based courses about the ecology of Alaska’s musk oxen, one-time contemporary of the wooly mammoth.

It’s just one example of active learning practiced by professors and instructors in courses that span the range of current inquiry in natural science and policy.

ES Department faculty are committed to project-based education because they’ve witnessed its benefits firsthand. Active-learning undertaken by ES faculty includes researching the ecological effects of Chilean salmon farms to uncovering Little Ice Age evidence in lake sediment.

With subject areas ranging from geographical information systems to wetlands processes, from water quality and hot-spot volcanism to subduction zones and pure mathematics, APU’s Environmental Science Department invites you to come find your place in our complex, interconnected world.