Introduction

The Master of Environmental Management (MEnvMgt) is offered internally by the School of Geography and Environmental Studies at the Hobart campus.

The program attracts people who are interested in environmental management, or who anticipate responsibility for environmental policy formation, or a role in environmental education. The course extends the professional expertise of people working in such fields as agriculture, community welfare, economics, education, engineering, forestry, law, medicine, planning, public health, political economy, science, and resource management. The course is of 18 months duration for full-time study or up to three years part-time.

Admission & Prerequisites

Applications for direct entry to the course are considered from those who have a suitable tertiary qualification or its equivalent. Applicants with a university degree and substantial professional experience (a minimum of two years' appropriate employment) are directly admissible, as are honours graduates and graduates with a four-year professional qualification. Diplomas and other such awards can be counted towards the four-year qualification. Applicants with a three year bachelor degree are directly admissible provided their standard of achievement is acceptable to the Faculty. People holding other than university tertiary qualifications are admissible subject to agreement by the Faculty that such qualifications are equivalent to those directly acceptable.

Students completing the GradDipEnvSt or GradDipNatEnvMgt may count their coursework towards the MEnvMgt.

To ensure entry to this course, application for admission should be made as early as possible.

Some students may be required to complete a preliminary reading unit. Such preparation is normally done before the commencement of the formal teaching in the first year of the course.

Course Objectives

Several basic assumptions underlie the University's program for the degree.

• Those who frame the alternatives from which environmental policy choices will be made must necessarily make highly significant value judgements. Public understanding of administrative decision-making will be enhanced when people are willing to make explicit the values underlying policy formation. Accordingly, emphasis is placed on developing a student's sense of values.
• While the economic, social, cultural, legal and physical aspects of any major environmental policy problem can be distinguished analytically, these aspects need to be viewed together if policy-makers are to come up with workable solutions. Therefore, the program stresses the need for integrative modes of thought.
• The character of the solutions required from environmental policy-makers is changing rapidly. Categorical solutions are no longer appropriate; more and more people are recognising the interdependence of public problems. Thus, the solutions which policy makers provide must be integrative in an additional sense. In order for governments to make authoritative decisions, the aspirations of competing institutions must be brought into direct relationship with one another so that, through a process during which these aspirations are modified, solutions which have a wide degree of acceptance are produced. This acceptance must be achieved in stages during which the point of view of all participants gradually changes. In recognition of the importance of the integrative approach, the course prepares students for policy making through a program which stresses the multifaceted nature of environmental problems.
  

Career Outcomes

This course provides the knowledge and skills background appropriate to senior level careers within environmental management, environmental policy formation, and environmental education.