Master of Science in Plant, Soil and Agricultural Systems (STEM) Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA

Our community of faculty and staff are committed to fostering student opportunities for a successful, professional future. Our courses will guide you through theory and hands-on experience, utilizing not only classrooms and labratories, but also the college’s 2,000-acre working farm—conveniently located adjacent to campus. More than 600 of these acres are dedicated to row crop production, vineyards, orchards, greenhouses, vermi-compost, turf, and vegetable production...and are all within your reach as part of this master's program. This extraordinary access provides our students with outside learning projects and demonstrations, as well as highly relevant paid work positions that fit perfectly in CVs and résumés of our graduates as they explore budding new careers.

While earning a Master of Science in Plant, Soil, and Agricultural Systems, your curriculum will be focused yet flexible to ensure success for your specific career path. We are proud to provide a variety of options for the numerous rewarding careers available to you upon graduation.

We offer three concentrations in our graduate program:

• Crop Science: This area of study is ideal for students interested in researching crop production, management, and precision farming, weeds and pest control, or plant breeding, genetics and biotechnology.
• Soil Science: In the soil science concentration, research areas include soil fertility, soil physics, soil microbiology, soil chemistry, or soil and water conservation
• Horticultural Science: Landscape design, vegetables, tree fruits, small fruits, floricultural and ornamental plant production, plant tissue culture, viticulture and turf management are all areas of research offered to students in the horticultural concentration.

You also have the option to add an emphasis in environmental studies in agriculture to any of these three concentrations. Additionally, if you interested in teaching at either the secondary or college level, you will find supporting courses in agricultural education and agricultural technologies in our graduate degree program.

In each of the three concentrations offered, your course of study will follow either a thesis option or a research paper (non-thesis) option. You and your advisory committee may add to your curriculum from supporting courses in education, communication, engineering plant biology, microbiology, chemistry, statistics depending on your career goals. Many of our students combine two areas into one thesis or research topic to allow for more advanced specializations.