The programme aims to provide a course of the highest academic quality in Earth Sciences in a challenging and supportive learning environment; be accessible to those qualified at intake in a broad and diverse range of sciences; maintain flexibility that allows students to choose a more generalist or more specialist curriculum appropriate to their interests; provide for student interaction with high level scientific expertise and advanced equipment in an environment committed to scientific advance; develop a systematic understanding of both core areas and advanced topics in the study of the Earth, its materials and structure, its history over 4600 million years, the processes that have controlled its evolution as a planet; develop the ability to evaluate primary evidence critically; and the conceptual understanding to present arguments and solutions based on primary data and theory; develop student skills in gathering and interpreting the geological and geophysical data used to gain this understanding and thereby equip them with the foundations for their professional careers or additional study; promote an appreciation of the limits to our present understanding of the Earth, its processes and the interactions between them; stimulate students to see Geology as a vital component of our culture, whereby science develops as informed curiosity about the Earth and Society’s environment, promoting human development and sustainability through the search for energy sources, raw materials, water supplies, sites for safe waste disposal, and the mitigation of natural hazards; provide an excellent preparation for a career in professional practice in industrial or environmental Earth Sciences, research in Earth Sciences, and specialist areas of other physical and natural sciences; provide, through a strong transferable skills strand, graduates for non-Earth-science industries, commerce, public service and education, particularly those needing to be informed by the methodology of a broad range of physical and natural science; view the Earth from new and challenging perspectives of time, space, process and pattern; to develop transferable skills related to problem solving, communication, practical fieldwork, and computing.