Bachelor of Science in Applied Biological Sciences (Natural Resource Ecology)

at Kaplan Group - Arizona State University - Polytechnic Campus USA

The MSTech program with a concentration in management of technology is open to individuals with a technical undergraduate degree who wish to develop their leadership and management skills to complement their technical expertise. The curriculum is tailored to the needs of the student, ensuring each student obtains basic leadership and management skills.

Accordingly, the program is heavy on cultural and information literacy and critical thinking. The primary goal is to produce generalists who understand the intricate interrelationship of science, technology and society and who are armed with the technical skills to change their environment.

The bachelor's degree program in science, technology and society prepares professionals and scholars for careers in the 21st century world focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the interaction of science and technology with human systems. The program focuses on the development of the technical skills required to audit social, political and policy impacts of technological advancement and the competence required to navigate questions surrounding the future trajectory of science and technology.

The following three tracks are available: general science, technology and society; global technology and development; and science, technology and governance. Students may use the general science, technology and society track to design targeted programs of their choosing, including premedical and prelaw.

The BS program in graphic information technology with a concentration in user experience is designed to provide students with an interdisciplinary foundation in design, research and communication, to prepare them for the rapidly growing area of user experience.

The concentration provides students with a conceptual understanding and applied skills in methods of gathering user information, analyzing data and communicating through visual design technologies. Although its disciplinary home and primary focus is graphic information technology, the concentration includes courses from the fields of human systems engineering and technical communication in order to provide students with the multiple perspectives and complementary skills needed for user experience work.

The BS program in human systems engineering provides students with an understanding of the science of human performance and with experience using methods and tools to apply this understanding to design and problem-solving in a wide variety of domains, such as product usability, learning design, sports performance and workplace and hospital safety.

A wide variety of professions need experts in human factors to work on problems that involve an understanding of human performance. Interest areas include user experience, aviation human factors, cognitive performance, consumer psychology, transportation human factors, patient safety, effective teamwork, health psychology, learning optimization, social cognition, threat detection and sports psychology.

The BS in applied mathematics is an interdisciplinary program that provides a broad and rigorous foundation in applied mathematics. It includes a foundation in computing and statistics as well as both theoretical and applied mathematics.

The program emphasizes quantitative problem-solving and critical thinking through courses that expose students to a variety of mathematical theories, techniques and applications currently used by analysts and researchers in government, industry and nonprofit organizations.

The MS program in applied biological sciences offers advanced instruction in the ecology and sustainable management of natural and urban ecosystems. Rigorous programs of study involving field and laboratory work are custom-designed to apply ecological or biological principles to problems in species or ecosystem conservation. All programs culminate with the completion of an intensive, research-based thesis or applied project.

The program is supported by faculty members with backgrounds in:

• Ecological restoration
• Environmental microbiology
• Environmental stress physiology
• Desert horticulture
• Plant-fungal ecology
• Plant systematics
• Riparian and stream ecology
• Wildlife biology

The MS program in organizational leadership offers a theoretically and methodologically rigorous approach to studying and creating use-inspired research needed to impact organizational leadership.

Students explore areas such as organizational dynamics, institutional evolution, strategic change, leading diverse teams, collaborative governance, conflict mediation, critical problem-solving and leadership assessment, and they learn advanced methodological and statistical skills.

The program places special emphasis on learning best practices and other applied aspects of leading organizations. Students tailor their degree to their interests through a vast array of leadership elective courses. In consultation with a faculty advisor, students choose from many different elective courses, such as not-for-profit leadership and intercultural leadership.

The MS program in user experience combines topics in web, human factors, visual displays and technical communication to make products, systems and services useful, usable and desirable.

Students learn how to research user needs, identify criteria for successful products and services, prototype those products and services, and refine them through usability testing and other user-centered evaluation methods. User experience skills are increasingly valued by industry yet are not typically covered in depth in traditional engineering or technical communication programs.

The acceleration of advances at the frontier where physics, engineering and technology meet creates a need for interdisciplinary training and research that is not readily accommodated by traditional single-focus programs in physics.

Pairing fundamental physics with immediate applications, the BS program in applied physics is attractive to students whose interests span new physical technologies in industry and engineering. The degree program combines physics, computer science and applied mathematics to tackle complex real-life problems in physics, material sciences, engineering, chemistry and others.

This bachelor's degree program brings together the expertise of physics faculty, particularly in the modeling of physical systems, which relies heavily on both modern numerical techniques and fundamental physics.

The growing presence of Intel and other high-tech companies in the east valley and metropolitan Phoenix presents a unique opportunity to enhance the students' interaction with industry. Given the importance of hands-on experience, the degree program offers a series of unique courses allowing students interactive involvement in a project-based environment.

In the BA program in business with a concentration in business administration, students gain a breadth of knowledge and the skills needed for managing business operations. The program provides the full business core plus a concentration with 18 hours of coursework focused on skills such as forecasting demand; planning inventory; purchasing services; conducting skillful negotiations; building strategies for the future and managing people, finances and risk.