University of Reading Global Academy

BSc Environmental Science with International Foundation Year

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

International Foundation Year

Compulsory modules 

• Academic Skills: Enhance your academic study and communication skills while gradually building confidence and mastering transferable abilities. Engage in various in-class group activities and individual study tasks to develop these skills effectively.

Optional modules

• Academic English 1: Develop the necessary basis in English for study at undergraduate level. You’ll develop key skills and a perspective on a range of contemporary topics that will equip you for study throughout your degree. 
• Academic English 2: Develop your competence in the use of English for academic purposes. You’ll be provided with the necessary linguistic foundation for your degree as you learn to use academic sources in a written and spoken context. 
• Ecology and the Environment: Explore key concepts and processes associated with both the physical and living environment and the interactions of both within ecosystems.
• Environmental Sustainability: Explore the causes and consequences of global contemporary sustainability issues. You’ll critique and evaluate both theoretical and actual methods used to minimise the harm caused through anthropogenic activities whilst recognise the interconnected nature of environmental problems.
• Foundation programme: Biology: Explore the life cycle of cells and the chemical reactions that give them energy and allow them to replicate. You’ll also study the biology of the human body and about natural selection and genetics. Through practical classes, you’ll familiarise yourself with laboratory work, as well as handling and interpreting data.  
• Chemistry: Learn how to predict the properties of molecules from their structures and gain an understanding of how and why reactions happen. You’ll also gain practical experience and develop skills by applying what you’ve learnt in a laboratory setting.
• Core Mathematics: Learn the techniques required to analyse and solve a variety of mathematical problems. You'll gain general mathematical skills as well as skills that are more related to your degree programme. 
• Quantitative Methods: Discover the techniques required to analyse and solve a variety of statistical problems. You'll gain general theoretical skills as well as numerical skills that are more related to your degree programme.

Year 1

Compulsory modules

• Skills in Geography and Environmental Science: Discover the expected academic standards and integrity at the undergraduate level, while being introduced to the Geography and Environmental Science discipline. Through real-world examples and data, learn essential skills for research.
• Global Challenges: A Planet in Crisis: Introduce yourself to the interrelated global challenges facing the planet and humanity today. You’ll become familiar with academic debates and human geography, physical geography and environmental science perspectives surrounding several key challenges and develop skills to use academic literature to support critical discussions.  
• Field Class: Undertake field research in a real-world setting, using contemporary methods and equipment for data gathering and experience working as part of a team. The training you receive will be authentic and relevant to your ambitions and to the skills you’ll likely need for dissertation field research.
• Earth Lab: Gain a foundational grasp of the concepts necessary for understanding how our environment works. Through site visits, sample collection, and laboratory analysis, you will get essential fieldwork and laboratory skills to assess the local environment's health.
• Data Environment: Explore the application of mathematics and statistics in environmental science. You’ll learn selected statistical packages, their advantages and disadvantages, and make good charts to understand and present the data collected. 

Optional modules

• Restless Planet: Learn about the fundamental processes in the Earth System, encompassing the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Discover the interactions between the spheres, particularly the Earth System's integrated nature and how alterations to key biogeochemical cycles, can have far-reaching impacts across the globe.
• Landscapes and Natural Resources: Discover the ways that spatial structure and renewable resources characterise natural landscapes, and how resilient these resources are in the face of global climate change.
• Fundamentals of Ecology: Learn how species interact with each other and their environment, how biodiversity assembles in communities and forms ecosystems and biomes, and how human activities are influencing many ecological processes. In practical sessions, you'll learn how to identify species and use sampling techniques such as sweep nets, footprint tunnels, and camera traps to collect and analyse your own data.

Year 2

Compulsory modules

• Skills Training and Project Design: Develop professional skills, including research approaches, project management, career awareness and employability. Work closely with an academic mentor to carry out carefully planned and highly professional research, act as consultants, designing, executing and reporting on a research project.
• Field Class: Undertake field research in a real-world setting, using contemporary methods and equipment for data gathering and experience working as part of a team. The training you receive will be authentic and relevant to your ambitions and to the skills you’ll likely need for dissertation field research.
• Environmental Diagnostics: Delve into a contemporary environmental issue to understand the principles and methods employed in environmental diagnostics. Learn about sampling, data quality objectives, measuring and tracking environmental parameters, as well as exploring how to present and interpret diagnostic data.

Optional modules

• Earth Processes and Hazards: Discover the dynamic process and resultant hazards which stem from the tectonic and geomorphological evolution of the Earth including volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, weather events and landslides, and the impact these can have on the natural world and human societies.
• Energy Resources: Explore past, present, and future social, environmental, health and political aspects of energy resource use. Gain a holistic consideration of the role of different energy resources in the national, international, and global energy mix.
• Geographical Information Systems: Discover the principles, techniques, and applications of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Work with the storage and management of spatial data, setting coordinate systems and projections, spatial analysis, and geoprocessing, creating and editing data, and cartography and symbology.
• Monitoring the Earth from Above: Develop your awareness of the importance of different spatial and temporal scales. Turn data into useful information for a range of geographical applications. Learn about the importance of resolution when conducting remote sensing analysis.
• Water in the Earth System: Get an introductory understanding of the connections between the abiotic and biotic components of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, pedosphere, and biosphere. Where relevant these relationships will be considered within the Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, Response (DPSIR) Framework.
• Climate and Environmental Change: Explore the evolution of atmosphere and climate, alongside ecosystem dynamics. Examine the main processes of climate formation of energy balance and atmospheric circulation and discuss natural climatic variability and climate change. 
• Advanced Ecology: Deepen your understanding of the patterns and processes in ecological systems. Lectures will cover biochemical cycles and the role of microbes in ecological processes, food webs, ecosystem services, and macroecological and biogeographical rules. You'll also explore the latest methodologies and become familiar with diverse computational and statistical techniques (genomics, macroecological comparative methods, species distribution modelling).
• Summer Placement: Undertake a research or professional placement related to your degree. Research placements provide the opportunity to work with a member of staff on a current project based in the UK or internationally. Professional placements allow you to work with a professional organisation, consultancy or government organisation.

Year 3

Compulsory modules

• Dissertation: Work on an independent dissertation project under the guidance of a supervisor. You’ll identify the research question, critically evaluate the relevant literature, apply theoretical frameworks and research methods to your research questions, and learn to analyse and synthesise the research findings.

Optional modules

• Air Pollution: Explore the history of air pollution, the origins and effects of sulphur dioxide and smoke, nitrogen oxides and particulates, ozone and other secondary pollutants, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, acid rain, indoor air pollution and more.
• Environmental Pollution: Develop an understanding of sources of key environmental contaminants and the mechanisms by which contaminants behave in the environment and cause toxicity to biological organisms. You’ll learn to apply contemporary methods to assess the effects of contaminants in the environment and interpret environmental data.
• Ecosystems Modelling: Model ecological dynamics, particularly land and below water ecosystems, which are relevant to a range of global issues, from environmental changes to food security. Gain an understanding of the building blocks of ecological models, from empirical to mathematical, for better understanding the ecosystem processes.
• Soil Ecology Environment and Sustainability: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the diversity of organisms living in soil, their adaptations to the soil habitat and their impact on the wider environment. You’ll also gain practical experience of isolating, culturing and observation of soil organisms and methods for measuring biologically mediated biochemical processes. 
• Preparing for Floods: Understanding key issues in flood preparedness, from the local to the global scale, including flood forecasting and warning, response and incident management and building community resilience. Encounter interactive seminars, computer practical, guest speakers and a visit to the Global Flood Awareness System operational centre.
• Climate Change: Learn about changes in global and regional climates that occurred in the last 1,000 years with emphasis on the recent (150 years) past. Examine natural and anthropogenic factors driving climate change such as changes in solar activity, aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere, and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.
• Tropical Rainforests, Climate, and Lost Civilisations: Unravel the long-term history of tropical forests and human-environment interactions using a range of complimentary approaches, with a focus on tropical South America, particularly Amazonia. Integrate physical and human geography, ecology, and archaeology.
• Coastal and Estuarine Management: Explore changes in coastal and estuarine environments in response to sea level rise, climate change, and anthropogenic pressures. Discover the processes driving the formation and evolution of a range of coastal environments, the geomorphic and hydrodynamics response to external forcing mechanisms, and the consequences for the natural and anthropogenic environments.
• Water Resources: Engage with past, current and future water quality problems and critically examine their impact, particularly on public health, as well as effectiveness of water resource management strategies and legislation.
• Physical Geography Field Class: Gain field experience to investigate natural hazards and their impact on human societies both past and present. We expect this field class will take place in Iceland and will allow you to experience a range of natural environments including such activities as: ice cave formation, glacier walking, volcanic tephra sampling, volcano monitoring and archaeological investigations.
• Environmental Science Field Class: Gain the practical skills to identify, document, and evaluate the impact of human activities on the environment in the field. While based at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST), China, you’ll conduct field work nearby.
• Geography and Environmental Science Field Class: Conduct in situ problem-based research, encompassing data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Learn practical skills applicable to regional geographical and environmental issues, enriching your knowledge of field investigation methods used in human and physical geography, as well as environmental science.

Your BSc Environmental Science degree will equip you with a wide variety of skills – from teamwork writing and presenting, to the ability to adapt to changing circumstances – highly desirable to a range of employers.

Overall, 91% of graduates from Geography and Environmental Science are in work or further study within 15 months of graduation (Based on our analysis of HESA data © HESA 2025, Graduate Outcomes Survey 2022/23; includes first degree Geography and Environmental Science responders).

You’ll be well placed to enter a variety of technical and scientific roles in areas such as:

• environmental protection
• renewable energy
• sustainable transport
• water
• environmental consultancy.

Past graduates have gone on to work for employers such as:

• Carbonxgen
• Environmental Agency
• Syngenta
• Mott MacDonald
• Storm Geomatics Ltd
• Thames Water
• and local government.

(Based on HESA data © HESA 2021 - 2025, Graduate Outcomes Survey 2018/19 - 2022/23; includes first degree responders from the Department of Geography and Environmental Science).

Your degree also offers a route into postgraduate study, research or teacher training.

Build the skills to succeed in your career – and contribute to a sustainable future

At the University of Reading, we help you turn your environmental and sustainability values into opportunities that make a difference to your career and the wider world.

Employers are already reshaping their businesses to respond to climate change, and they increasingly value graduates with expertise in environmental stewardship – one of the fastest-growing skill areas (World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025).

During your time at Reading, you’ll have access to a wide range of opportunities and support. This will help you graduate with the knowledge and confidence to tackle environmental and sustainability challenges in your career.

In 2025, the University of Reading won the AGCAS Green Careers Award. Judges highlighted the impact of our Careers service and the positive outcomes our students achieve.