An evolving graduate education program formed by cooperation between Western Kentucky University (WKU), the National Park Service (NPS), the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, and the Cave Research Foundation is providing training to a variety of NPS scientists with responsibilities for management of natural resources. The program leads to a Master's of Science degree in Geosciences or Biology. While it initially focused on karst-related water and geologic issues, it is now expanding to include a wider variety of topics, including Geographic Information Systems, environmental planning, and terrestrial ecology. The fundamental key to the program lies in balancing flexibility (from both WKU and NPS) with a high academic standard, in a way that allows resource managers to gain graduate training while keeping their NPS positions. Rather than a standard series of classroom courses, the program offers programs tailored to each student's situation and professional needs, with various combinations of briefer than usual time in residence at WKU (in this program typically two semesters instead of two years), short courses held at various locations around the US, distance courses, and thesis research within NPS park units, typically at the student's home park.

Cooperation in research and education between WKU and NPS has a long history that goes back to the WKU Center for Cave and Karst Studies' Mammoth Cave summer "Karst Field Studies" Program, founded by Nick Crawford in 1980 and which continues as an important component of the program today. Simultaneously, since 1990 numerous WKU graduate thesis research projects have been completed at Mammoth Cave National Park in water and air quality, hydrogeology, geomorphology, and ecology. In 1999 we began tailoring graduate programs to NPS employees. Nine NPS employees from Mammoth Cave, Sequoia, Chattahoochee River, and Carlsbad Caverns are currently enrolled in the program, and David Ek, the program's pioneer student, will finish in early 2003. Park thesis research underway includes projects that study hydrologic budgets, water quality, and karst landscape evolution at Mammoth Cave and alpine carbon dioxide budgeting in Sequoia.