The Department of Earth Sciences was first established in 1984 and has been growing steadily ever since. The primary mission of the department is to nurture students to be capable of doing independent research and application for their future academic or professional careers. Currently there are 24 full-time faculty members, covering five major research areas in Earth Sciences, including Astronomy (5, with expertise in radio and extragalactic astronomy, planetary Science), Atmospheric Science (6, specialty in climate modeling and mesoscale meteorology), Geology (5, tectonics, petrology and paleontology), Geophysics (3, near-surface geophysics, seismology and repeating earthquakes), Oceanic Science (5, physical and chemical oceanography,and science education). There are about 160 undergraduate students, ~70 graduate students in MS program and ~21 PhD graduate students. To become internationalized, the Department has offered courses taught completely in English and has recruited several English-speaking non-Chinese faculty members. In addition, the Department is expected to hire another faculty member to a total of 25 in a year or two. The Department has been very active in forefront research and publishes a number of refereed SCI and SSCI journal papers each year.