Orientation

Each student should plan to attend two orientations: (1) a 2-day MEDS-only orientation on Thursday 8/01/2024 (at Bren) and Friday 8/02/2024 (at NCEAS) before summer classes begin on Monday 8/05/2024, and (2) a 3-day campus-wide UCSB orientation from Monday 9/23/2024 - Wednesday 9/25/2024.

Click here for the full Summer Orientation Schedule. For more information on the incoming MEDS student orientation, please visit the Bren Website.

Summer

Summer Intensive Courses

During the first 6 weeks of the MEDS program (August through mid-September), students will take 4 intensive courses:

Week 1: EDS 212: Essential Math in Environmental Data Science (2 units)
Weeks 2 & 3: EDS 221: Scientific Programming Essentials (4 units)
Week 4: EDS 214: Analytical Workflows & Scientific Reproducibility (2 units)
Week 5 & 6: EDS 217: Python for Environmental Data Science (4 units)

For more detailed descriptions of the summer courses, see our Courses page.

Location

All Summer courses will be held at NCEAS in downtown Santa Barbara. The address is 1021 Anacapa Street (click here for directions).

NCEAS is ~11 miles (a 15 minute drive, without traffic) from the UC Santa Barbara campus, or a ~35 minute bus ride on the 24x line. The transit center downtown is ~3 blocks from NCEAS (a <10 minute walk).

A day in a Summer course

The Summer intensive session is designed to prepare MEDS students with the fundamental coding and computational skills necessary for all subsequent courses. These are full days of learning, running from 10:00am - 4:00pm Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and from 9:00am - 4:00pm on Wednesdays. Students generally should not expect additional assignments or MEDS-related work outside of these hours. In other words, courses will be structured so that all course requirements can be completed within the 9:00/10:00am - 4:00pm window while at NCEAS.

That doesn’t mean you’ll be watching lectures all day! Summer session days will be active, varied, and flexible, and students can expect a combination of course content (e.g. lectures, computational labs, individual and group tasks) and allotted time (on Wednesday mornings) for community-building, professional & career development activities, and more.

Fall/Winter/Spring

In Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters, core MEDS courses will be held at the Bren School (UCSB campus), with elective courses and some events held at NCEAS. Students can expect a more traditional academic class schedule (e.g. 2-3 classes/discussion sections/seminars a day). You can add the MEDS google calendar here.

Fall

In Fall Quarter, MEDS students will complete 14 units of coursework.

EDS 220: Working with Environmental Data (4 units)
EDS 222: Statistics for Environmental Data Science (4 units)
EDS 223: Geospatial Analysis & Remote Sensing (4 units)
EDS 242: Ethics & Bias in Environmental Data Science (2 units)

You should also sign up for EDS 296 which will take place on Fridays at NCEAS.

Winter

In Winter Quarter, students will complete 14 units of coursework, three traditional academic courses and one 4-unit capstone project course.

EDS 232: Machine Learning in Environmental Science (4 units)
EDS 240: Data Visualization and Communication (4 units)
EDS 241: Environmental Policy Evaluation (2 units)
EDS 411A: Capstone Group Project A (4 units)

Spring

In Spring Quarter, students will complete 14 units of coursework, three traditional academic courses and one 4-unit capstone project course.

EDS 213: Databases and Data Management (4 units)
EDS 230: Modeling Environmental Systems (4 units)
EDS 231: Text and Sentiment Analysis for Environmental Problems (2 units)
EDS 411B: Capstone Group Project B (4 units)

Workshops

In addition to the MEDS core curriculum (as detailed above), additional workshops will be held throughout the year. These include the following:

workshops and events led by the Career Services team to guide students through the job search and application process (e.g. resume, cover letter, interviewing, and salary negotiation workshops, career talks and panels, etc.) – these will typically take place on Thursday mornings from 8:15-9:15am at Bren or on Zoom
data science and technical workshops led by the MEDS Data Training Coordinator and campus-based teaching teams – these primarily live-coding-based workshops focus on technical skills that we believe are important for data scientists to have, but that don’t fit neatly into existing core curricula (e.g. building & customizing personal websites, building R shiny apps and dashboards, etc.); please fill out this survey if you have suggestions for future technical workshops!)

Program Overview