Lakehead University
AC-4: Graduate Program

Provides a common curriculum to train graduates from engineering and related natural sciences in providing effective solutions to environmental challenges faced by industries and communities.

Faculty members and graduate students conduct cutting-edge research in both fundamental studies and applied science and engineering to address the global environmental issues, such as climate change, water crisis, and energy crisis etc.

Specific topics include:

Biorefinery and Bioenergy Production: Biodiesel, biofuels and biogas productions, lignin and hemicelluloses recovery, purification, and utilization, adsorption, fermentation, flocculation, and membrane separations.

Geoenvironmental Engineering: Characterization, analysis and monitoring and remediation of contaminated sites, including electrokinetic remediation, and design and performance assessment of engineered barriers of waste containment.

Green Cements: Advanced cements and waste formulations using industrial waste materials and chemical admixtures to reduce the carbon footprint of construction activities.

Greenhouse Gases Reduction: Capture of CO2, Adsorption.

Water Resource Engineering: Physically-based modeling in hydrology and hydraulics, applications of advanced soft computing techniques in water resources, climate change impacts, and in-field monitoring, river dynamics, erosion and sedimentation, and hydraulic structures.

Water and Wastewater Purification: CFD modeling, electrochemical treatment, freeze-thaw processes, environmental biotechnology, membrane bioreactors, and photocatalytic reactors.

The program brings together faculty members from chemical, civil and mechanical engineering, biology, chemistry, forestry, and geology to enable students to carry out multidisciplinary course and thesis work, helping students achieve an integrated understanding of the multifaceted components of environmental issues.

An interdisciplinary degree that has roots in social sciences such as leisure studies, human geography, sociology, psychology, and anthropology as well as in the professional areas of tourism, community development, resource management, parks and protected areas, and forestry.

The degree focuses on the development of research skills and knowledge in policy and planning, and recreation and tourism behaviour.

The program covers:

Recreation and Tourism Behaviour: Focuses on the individuals and groups whose participation in recreation and tourism activities occur in natural settings such as parks, conservation areas, and Crown Lands

Policy, Planning, and Management: Concerns issues such as social and economic impact assessment, market research and analysis, cost-benefit analysis and planning methodologies that support an integrated form of ecosystem management and a philosophy as sustainability.

An interdisciplinary program offered jointly by the departments of anthropology and geography, designed to train graduates to investigate, understand and appreciate issues peculiar to northern environments and cultures.

Graduates of this program will have the skills to meet the challenges of environmental and cultural issues faced by communities, industries, and services in northern areas. The research focus of the program will be the boreal north - the area covered by the boreal forest and the ecotone between the forest and tundra - although research in the Arctic and far north will not be excluded. Areas in other parts of the world with characteristics similar to those in the boreal north will also be considered as appropriate locations for study.

Master of Science in Forestry: https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/graduate/programs/masters/forestry/node/7265

Doctor of Philosophy in Biotechnology with an option to specialize in Environmental Biotechnology: https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/graduate/programs/doctoral/biotechnology/node/7253

Doctor of Philosophy in Forest Sciences: https://www.lakeheadu.ca/academics/graduate/programs/doctoral/forest-sciences/node/7251

The Education for Change option allows students to specialize in one of the following fields:

Environmental and Sustainability Education: focuses on theory, research, and practices that analyze the cultural and ecological politics of sustainability and foster mutually flourishing relationships between humanity and the natural world. It includes approaches such as climate change pedagogy, ecopedagogy, environmental justice education, food education, humane education, outdoor education, and place-based education.

Indigenous Education: grounded in Indigenous historical, philosophical, sociocultural, and political foundations and Indigenous research, protocols, and practices that focus on educational aspects of the politics of colonization and decolonization, honouring Indigenous knowledges and relationships to land, exploring Indigenous approaches to well-being, and revitalizing traditional worldviews and languages.

Social Justice Education: focuses on theory, research, and practices that analyse and address social forces both in and out of schools that perpetuate injustice and oppression, and includes approaches with diverse emphases such as anti-racist education, anti-classist education, fat pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, humane education, Indigenous education, inclusive education, and queer pedagogy.