Term 1 is Core and all students attend the full-time programme mainly dedicated to hard skills such as Programming, Maths & Statistics. For those with advanced maths skills there is the option to choose between further quantitative methods training, or to obtain a grounding in Biology. In addition to these topics, we provide weekly sessions to help you communicate your science effectively. This covers areas such as writing style; preparing abstracts, manuscripts, figures and tables; planning and proofreading; designing posters and slides; and oral presentations. These not only balance out the more intensive quantitative courses providing a change of pace and focus, but they also prepare you for term 2. Term 1 finishes with three introductory days in the Earth System course which is picked up again at the start of term 2 and this marks the transation to the more NERC-focussed portion of the course. Here you will learn about the breadth of environmental research being carried out at Oxford in the context of how the earth operates as a cohesive system. You will get a clearer idea of where you fit into the broader picture of environmental research, and will discover research methods used in other streams, which may be applicable to your own research. The aim of this course is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
Core Courses in Term 1
Programming
Essential Maths
Advanced QM
Statistics
Effective Scientific Communication
The Earth System
Graduate Research Seminars