Environmental Education

Department of Environmental Studies, College of the Environment

Environmental Studies takes an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to understanding human-environment systems and environmental challenges. The Environmental Studies major includes core classes in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities to prepare our students to integrate knowledge from multiple fields of study. Our students learn to analyze and interpret complex environmental data and communicate environmental information for diverse stakeholders. The Environmental Studies major equips students to succeed as environmental professionals through experiential learning and advanced coursework in each student’s choice of an emphasis.

Are you interested in teaching and learning in informal ways? Does working with community excite you? Do you want to help organizations and individuals engage in change work and justice-related causes? Do you love to work outdoors with children or adults? Then the Education and Eco Social Justice emphasis is for you.

This emphasis engages you in critical, practical, experiential, action- and solutions-based education. It explores themes of environmental hope, eco- and social-justice, Indigenous and Land/Sea pedagogies, and Urban/City settings. With partnerships around the Salish Sea, students work on local projects that focus on public health, socio-environmental literacy, and climate justice.

Graduates with this emphasis have assumed positions as curriculum consultants, interpreters with resource management agencies, youth coordinators, facilitators for disability services, and a diversity of educator roles with non-profits, schools, government, and businesses.