Today’s environmental professionals need to acquire career skills associated with social sciences, natural sciences and human values to communicate with and engage communities in addressing critical environmental issues of local, regional and global concern. In Environmental Studies programs, typical of liberal arts institutions, students develop communication and critical thinking skills as they integrate environmental policy, ecological concepts and skills and empathy in community-engaged projects. The recently ESA-endorsed four-dimensional ecology education framework (4DEE) advocates for undergraduate ecology education that extends textbook understanding into applications and the ability to address emerging environmental concerns. The 4DEE framework focuses on integrating the discussion of human-environment interactions and cross-cutting ecology themes (like scale and evolution) into ecology coursework while providing students with the field work, technological and communication skills needed to address environmental issues. The framework’s elevated importance of the human dimension, the experiential learning focus connecting ecology education to societal environmental issues, such as biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration, environmental health and environmental justice, are all in line with recent research on factors that attract students from diverse backgrounds to environmental careers (Taylor 2017). We will review curriculum of Environmental Studies programs at private and public liberal arts institutions, showcasing how they can provide the skills and knowledge needed for today’s environmental workforce and will outline the components of successful programs in relation to the 4DEE framework.
Results/Conclusions
Our results indicate that today’s environmental careers require undergraduates to gain a clear understanding of the connection between environmental and social systems, as well as gain skills in project design, implementation and project management. We will discuss how to develop the necessary transdisciplinary curriculum typical of Environmental Studies programs, in relation to existing campus resources (e.g. faculty, infrastructure, college mission, related student organizations, campus community outreach initiatives) and use the ESA 4DEE framework to assess the environmental career readiness of their graduates. The results indicate that the broad range of mostly non-academic environmental careers require the focus on real-world problem-solving career skills obtained from transdisciplinary environmental undergraduate majors. Requiring an experiential component of majors gives students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to local environmental problems such as providing clean water or promoting sustainability. Experience with solution-based learning, grant writing and community interactions prepares students of all backgrounds for careers leading to improved human-environment interrelationships.