| The Drexel
Difference
The graduate academic program, established
at Drexel University in 1963, is one of the oldest environmental
programs in the United States. Students and faculty benefit from
a situation that fosters collaboration and multidisciplinary approaches
to addressing environmental issues.
Drexel's program places an emphasis on solving problems of the urban
environment. The University is located in Philadelphia, the nation's
fifth largest city and a principal east-coast port. The city is
situated between two major U.S. rivers -- the Delaware and Schuylkill
-- from which the city draws its water supply and subsequently to
which it discharges its treated wastewater. The metropolitan area
straddles two of the most important geologic formations in the Northeast
- the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Piedmont Province, in which
several hundred EPA Superfund sites are buried.
One of the most pressing problems in this metropolitan area is uncontrolled
growth or urban sprawl, which poses significant threats to both
the quality and quantity of the regional water supply as well as
air and land resources. Drexel's program has a long-standing tradition
of partnering with health departments, local water utilities, and
environmental agencies in the Philadelphia region and with the Academy
of Natural Sciences in solving environmental problems, where the
metropolitan area serves as a laboratory for training students outside
of the classroom.
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