Coursework and research opportunities are available to specialize in atmospheric sciences, global climate change, chemical oceanography and paleoceanography, environmental geology and geochemistry, isotope geochemistry, soil biogeochemistry and physiology, shallow subsurface and marine geophysics, groundwater and surface water hydrology, urban ecology and limnology, geomicrobiology, geomorphology and quaternary studies, sedimentation, sedimentary petrology, paleontology, experimental mineralogy and petrology, igneous and metamorphic petrology.?

Faculty are involved in field activities from areas around New York City, to the northern Appalachians of New England, and continental U.S., to numerous localities around the world, e.g., the Southern Ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caribbean, South America, South and East Asia, and Europe. Faculty members participate fully in the CUNY Graduate Center PhD program in earth and environmental sciences. Cooperative research projects exist with the American Museum of Natural History and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.?