<p>I'm currently debating whether or not to pursue a major offered by my school's environmental studies department called "Environmental Chemistry", which is a core ES curriculum + Chemistry courses up through Orgo. </p>
<p>I find the major fascinating and probably much easier than the straight Chemistry major.</p>
<p>Problem is, what do I do after college? Are there good graduate programs for E. Chemistry or is this a waste of my time?</p>
<p>It probably shouldn't surprise you that environmental chemistry is a growing field given current affairs. Many schools are proud of their green chemistry labs, and this goes up to MIT and Columbia. </p>
<p>So I say if you love it than absolutely go for it, but for your own enrichment I'd recommend you take one chemistry course in particular:
- Quantitative Analysis (sometimes Analytical Chemistry) - For all the lab techniques environmental chemists need. My instructor for this course was a minor celebrity in environmental science.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip. I know that analytical chem is a big part of green/enviro chem since a lot of green chem is sample analysis with machines like GC-MS and HPLC.</p>
<p>I'm currently in a good PhD program for environmental chemistry (in a geoscience department), and I would say that now is a great time to be getting into the field. It is still fairly young, and there are a lot of big questions that still have yet to be answered. If you do go into this field though, there are a couple of things you might want to do/should be aware of:</p>
<pre><code> -besides analytical chem, I would make sure you take inorganic chemistry. Having organic chemistry will help as well (I hadn't taken either before I started grad school, but I am currently taking inorganic, and will probably audit orgo next year). Depending on how biological you want to get (bacteria are big these days), biochemistry might be useful. Other useful analytical techniques you might want to be familiar with besides the ones you mentioned include IR and Raman spectroscopies as well as various techniques utilizing synchrotron radiation such as XANES, EXAFS, STXM, and XPS
-environmental chemists are not just found in chemistry deparments. Many of them are in geoscience, environmental science, soil science, civil engineering, environmental engineering, chemical engineering, and even a couple in physics departments (most are actually in geoscience, environmental engineering, and chemistry departments though), depending on exactly what specific topics they study and what methods they use, so if you eventually decide to apply to grad school, be aware that you might end up in any one of these types of departments
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<p>-if you want to read up on the current state of the field, Geochemica et Cosmochemica Acta, Environmental Science and Technology, and Applied and Environmental Microbiology are three good journals to start with</p>
<p>-after you graduate undergrad, you can either go to grad school (PM me if you want to know more about which schools have good grad programs in enviro chem), or if you want to just get a job, you could work for an environmental consulting firm doing environmental remediation or something in that vein</p>
<p>-even though the environmental chemistry major might initially be easier than a chem major, once you get into upper level classes/research, you might find that to not be the case anymore. Earth's surface environment is a complicated place, and you need to know a bit about a lot of fields in order to understand the bigger picture. However I, at least, think that this broadness of subject matter and research questions makes environmental chemistry a really interesting field to be in</p>
<p>Anyway, I hope that this was helpful for you. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!</p>
<p>wow, didnt expect to find someone in such a narrow field responding to this post...thanks for the head up on the profession.</p>
<p>"-environmental chemists are not just found in chemistry deparments. Many of them are in geoscience, environmental science, soil science, civil engineering, environmental engineering, chemical engineering, and even a couple in physics departments (most are actually in geoscience, environmental engineering, and chemistry departments though)</p>
<p>and microbiology departments</p>
<p>yes definitely in microbiology departments...environmental microbiology/geomicrobiology/astrobiology are pretty big these days</p>
<p>Yes, I am planning to pursue this- I’m majoring in environmental science from a small LAC and specializing in chem. I’m having the same problem- the field is SO large I don’t know what to specialize in! also, I have no idea where to look at for graduate school.</p>
<p>Some top tier grad schools like duke have enviro sci programs (UWisconsinMadison has a very specialized enviro chem program. They are top tier for chemistry too).</p>
<p>I’m worried about admissions though since it’s about a 3-5% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Environmental Chemistry is not done much in Chemistry Departments, but the Department I belong to has 6 (soon to be 7) faculty whose primary areas of research are environmental chemistry. Research in Environmental Chemistry ([Environmental</a> Chemistry, The Graduate School, SUNY-ESF](<a href=“http://www.esf.edu/chemistry/graduate/environmental/]Environmental”>http://www.esf.edu/chemistry/graduate/environmental/)) spans a wide range, from field work to laboratory work to computer modeling, and from global biogeochemical cycles to ecosystems to air and water pollution.
We offer MS and PhD degrees.</p>