Off Campus Master of Science Degree Program in Soil Science.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst offers an Off Campus MS degree in Soil Science through a combination of courses that are taught in person, on-line, and as blended courses (combination of in person and on-line instruction).  The program is a professional terminal degree program which was started 20 years ago to allow working men and women to further their education in soil science. To better serve the needs of the soil science profession in the 21^st Century the program has recently evolved from the traditional in person classes to blended courses. Our first fully on-line courses are currently being taught using lecture capture software. Soil Morphology and Mapping; Hydric Soils, and Advanced Hydric Soils courses will, for the foreseeable future, remain in person classes. Other classes such as Literature Seminar and Soil Formation and Classification lend themselves to a blended format with the majority of the course taught on-line, but final presentations and field trips are in person and/or in the field. Soil Formation and Classification includes several virtual laboratory sessions, in which laboratory procedures are demonstrated on-line, laboratory data are presented to the students and laboratory reports written by student groups.