Master's in Oceanography & Coastal Sciences

• 24 semester hours of graduate level courses
  
  • Courses taken in three out of the four core areas
  • Six hours of thesis research
  • A minimum of 12 credit hours at the 7000 level
• The completion and defense of a Master's thesis

Students looking to receive a professional Master's are admitted through the regular admission procedures of the LSU Graduate School and the Department's Academic Affairs Committee. You may attend full- or part-time., and you must maintain an at least a 3.0 cumulative grade point average.

Requirements:

36 hours of coursework beyond a Bachelor's degree, all of which must be approved by the student's Advisory Committee, including:

• Minimum of 18 hours in courses numbered at 7000 or above6 hours of departmental core courses or approved substitutions
• 9 hours of advanced course work in one DOCS specialized area
• 9 hours in a minor field outside of DOCS
• At least 3 semester hours of advanced field or literature research based on internship or a team project (e.g. OCS 8900, OCS 8901), which demonstrates the student’s ability to synthesize data and demonstrates acceptable writing skills
• 9 hours of electives (within or outside of department)
  A student must pass a final exam, both oral and written, to be given by the Student’s Advisory Committee.
• During the last semester, professional students must deliver an oral presentation of a written research report from the internship or team project, one copy must be turned into the DOCS office prior to graduation.

All MS students are required to have successfully completed  Calculus I and Calculus II with a grade of C or better. If you have not completed them by time of enrollment, you will be required to do so during your first year. However, it is advisable to have at least the first calculus course completed prior to enrollment.

This requirement can be met by taking MATH 1550 (Analytical Geometry and Calculus I) and MATH 1552 (Analytical Geometry and Calculus II). For a course at another university to count as equivalent to LSU's MATH 1550, it should cover limits, differentiation, and integration, not only for algebraic functions, but also for exponential and trigonometric functions. Math 1554 (Calculus II for Life Sciences) may be substituted from Math 1552 with prior committee approval.

For MS students, who have not completed Calculus II by the time of enrollment another quantitative focused course taken during their first year at LSU may be substituted for Calculus II with prior approval of their advisory committee (including but not limited to courses in math, statistics, modeling, computer sciences, etc.). A student may register for those courses on a pass-fail basis with approval of the student's major professor, department chair, instructor of the course involved, and the dean of the Graduate School. The instructor will determine actual quality of work required to obtain a grade of "P".

Professional MS students (i.e. not thesis track) are exempt from the above requirements.

Two semesters of introductory biology for sciences majors courses, equivalent to LSU BIOL 1201 and 1202, completed with a C or better.

Two chemistry courses equivalent to LSU CHEM 1201 and 1202, with a C or better.

One semester introductory course, with a C or better.

One semester introductory course, with a C or better.