The Environmental Studies Program offers opportunities to acquire highly valued skills that range from critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration to written and graphic communication, data analysis, and field techniques. It teaches students how to critically understand environmental issues and work toward a world where all lives can thrive. These skills and critical understandings of social and environmental processes effectively prepare students for jobs in government, industry, and advocacy.
As the relationships between humans and their environments grow increasingly complex, it is clear that no single approach is going to resolve any of these problems. Our Environmental Studies program goes beyond a narrow focus on the physical sciences or emphases on purely technological solutions to solve environmental problems and recognizes that insights from the social sciences and humanities are not to be simply integrated into a physical science approach. Instead, the social sciences, physical sciences, and the humanities must each help form the foundation for how we answer questions and, indeed, which questions we should be asking in the first place. Students are expected to take courses from across the physical and social sciences and the humanities.
In our program, students do much more than sample from a selection of classes until they have fulfilled all requirements. Instead, students will learn to combine insights from across the disciplines, integrating them to form a holistic approach to studying the environment. Students can take courses from across a diverse range of disciplines. These include Geology and Chemistry; Geography, Anthropology, Sociology; and Art History, Comparative Literature, and Philosophy. For a complete list of participating programs, see Collaborating Programs and Departments [link to that page]
Environmental Studies provides a unique combination of the offerings of a large university with the intimacy of a small department. While we have dozens of affiliated faculty members and programs, our program is administered by a small advising team housed in a small department, giving the program the feel of being in a much smaller school. In a huge university like Rutgers, where it’s easy to feel “anonymous”, our students tend to develop close working relationships with the advising team and other faculty in the department, as well as their fellow students, through coursework and department events. In addition to their scholarly development, students often leave our program having developed a community of mentors and friends.
We emphasize the importance of field experience and independent research for students’ development as thinkers. Students are required to conduct field-based independent research in their senior year (with faculty supervision), but are also encouraged to seek out research opportunities with faculty. For example, several of our students have participated in the Rutgers Interdisciplinary Research Teams program, which solicits proposals from students and faculty each year.
Internships are another great way students can get field- and job-experience while earning credit toward this degree.
Make a difference in the world.
Enjoy what you do.
Spend time outside.
This major prepares students for a range of jobs in government, non-profit, and private sectors. Our students have found jobs at the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, National Park Service, NRG Home Solar, and The Watershed Institute, to name just a few.
However, in today’s job market, the name of your major isn’t what determines where you end up. Instead, employers are looking for people who have done interesting work and are passionate and driven about what they do. This is one of the reasons we put our energy and resources toward helping students develop their own interests and expertise through research, internships, and coursework.