New Mexico Tech's Department of Earth and Environmental Science offers MS and PhD degrees in a broad range of earth sciences. The department incorporates four strongly interacting graduate programs, Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Hydrology, in association with an integrated undergraduate major in Earth Science featuring options in Environmental Geology, Geochemistry, Geology, Geophysics, and Hydrology. The department also administers a cross-department undergraduate degree in Environmental Science.

The department has 20 faculty members, of which six are in geophysics, four in hydrology, and ten in geology and geochemistry. In addition, the department has 30 affiliated research and adjunct faculty who are actively involved in research and/or teaching. Many of these are from the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, which is located on campus, but they also come from industry, national laboratories, and other organizations. The IRIS PASSCAL Instrument Center and EarthScope USArray Array Operations Facility, two major NSF-funded seismological facilities, are also housed on campus and administered by faculty of the geophysics program.

The department maintains an average of 90 graduate and 65 undergraduate students and is strongly research-oriented. Major areas of research include (but are not restricted to):

• cave and karst studies
• earthquake seismology and general geophysics
• economic geology
• faults and fluid flow
• geochronology
• groundwater hydrology
• paleoclimatology
• sedimentology and diagenesis
• surficial processes and hydrology
• tectonics
• volcanology