Founded in 1888, UT Austin’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences—the academic unit of the Jackson School of Geosciences—is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious geoscience programs in the world. The graduate program in the top ten nationally for Earth sciences, the only program in Texas with this distinction.

With over 45 faculty members and a research program addressing the most pressing issues of the 21st century—climate, water, energy transition,natural resources, or natural disasters—while exploring fundamental questions in Earth and planetary sciences, the Department is among the largest and most academically diverse in the world. The Department offers unparalleled field, computational and analytical laboratory research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students—one of the largest combined enrollments of any major geosciences program—and has over 5,000 alumni.