The World Ahead: Career Opportunities

In a world of increasingly complex environmental problems, growing focus on sustainability and “greening” society, and efforts to include environmental study in K-12 education, the type and number of jobs available to Environmental Studies majors grows daily. SU’s Environmental Studies program gives graduates solid preparation for the future.

Through a series of meetings with their advisors, most ENVR majors find themselves working towards one of six career paths, and choose a minor and elective courses accordingly. These paths, in brief are:

1. Land/ Resource Management (for example working with the National Park Service, MD Department of Natural Resources, private organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, etc.)

2. Pollution Control/Abatement (for example working with the EPA or the MD Department of the Environment)

3. Environmental Advocacy (this can be either at the national level, working for organizations such as the Sierra Club, the regional level, working for organizations such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, or the local level, working for organizations such as the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance)

4. Eco-Tourism/Environmental Education (this involves experiential education, working for outdoor camps, eco-tourism organizations, etc. This major does NOT prepare you to teach high school Environmental Science).

5. Sustainable Business (for example, working in the Environmental management division of a private business, or in their sustainability office).

6. Graduate School or Law School (Environmental Law, Environmental Studies MA/MS/PhD programs ,or disciplinary graduate programs with an environmental focus).

For further information about job opportunities and to see what some of our ENVR graduates are doing, please link to Salisbury University’s career services