I’m majoring in environmental science and I have to choose a focus. I can choose from environmental biology, geology, planning, technology, or chemistry. I wanted to do biology originally, but it has twice as many required courses as the others. Which option would be best for a wider range of job options after I graduate? Would any of them open up options of jobs with higher pay?
I was also thinking of minoring in journalism, but my university has a science writing minor. Which one would be best if I want to publish articles for magazines/newspapers/online? Or would a minor not even be necessary? I’ve read on some other college forums that it’s not really necessary to minor in journalism if you want to write about a specific topic; you just have to be knowledgeable on your major enough to write about it.
Thank you!
The main track in environmental science jobs is in helping clients comply with environmental regulations. This track involves site inspections, sampling (occasionally), data evaluations, report writing, helping clients develop environmental programs that enable them to be compliant, risk mitigation proposals and ultimately policy making. These jobs are largely with engineering consulting firms. A relatively minor track is as a biologist. I see a couple of these on Indeed.com today; they both entail doing on-site surveys and are temporary jobs. Then there are miscellaneous tracks, such as decontaminating polluted sites. With respect to dependable money, the main track is best.
For the main track it is important to know or quickly learn about the regulations that apply where you will work.The job descriptions for these, I see, ask for bachelor’s degree education in engineering or science. Knowledge of chemistry, biology and geology they seek about equally, with occasional mention of physics.
It may be that the Planning focus deals a lot with regulations. You will have to look at the specific course curricula and/or speak to the instructors for the courses to determine whether that track will be particularly useful in developing your fluency with regulations. If it is, then it is a good choice for focus.
If it doesn’t, then the Technology focus, if it is pretty good for acquainting you with engineering.
If neither Planning nor Technology deliver in the indicated ways, then the thing to do is to broadly cover all the areas (in other words, don’t focus at all). The strategy then is to appease the college by selecting any focus that has low requirements (not biology, then). That will allow you to ensure you cover all the areas pretty well.
Colleges/universities are in large measure out of touch with the industries they are supposed to prepare people for. There should be an emphasis on regulations, but it may be that the faculty doesn’t recognize it. And Technology may not provide the engineering familiarity that engineering companies employing environmental scientists would like. If that is the case, then for someone who is going for the main employment track, there is no point in having a focus, so the objective becomes giving the college the impression of a focus to humor them.
Thankyou @jjwinkle That was very helpful. However, I googled average salaries for environmental technician, environmental biologist, and environmental planner. The technicians seemed to make the least amount of money-- less than $41,000/year-- while the others (biologist, planner) seemed to make more than $60,000. Why do you think that is?
The school I’m going to has quite a few engineering courses for the environmental technology path, but it doesn’t seem like it would be a very successful career. Perhaps the environmental planning path would be best.