College environmental programs are a boon to job-seekers, eco-warriors and a planet demanding new
solutions
By Elyse Glickman
What do you want to be when you grow up… besides a socially responsible citizen? The answer to that question has become a bit more complicated in the last decade. Once upon a time, a college degree assured a good job. Today, however, several once-solid degrees and career paths are teetering on obsolescence.
That said, there is one area—environmental studies—growing by leaps and bounds. So much so that L.A.’s top universities, including UCLA, USC, Occidental, Loyola-Marymount and California State University, as well as many of the community colleges, are offering sustainability-related degree and certificate programs geared to students with a variety of skill sets and goals.
Recruitment information for UCLA’s Leaders in Sustainability program, for example, allows students to “create a program tailored to their needs and background by choosing among the sustainability-related opportunities at UCLA. Students take a core course in sustainability and relevant electives, and participate in leadership training.”
Cully Nordby, academic director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, rightfully boasts that, “This highly effective educational model produces broadly trained, capable problem-solvers, and at the same time fosters ongoing, synergistic collaboration among students, researchers, faculty, agencies, businesses and community organizations.”
Cal State L.A.’s science-focused program in their College of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology encompasses a Center for Energy and Sustainability. Their program’s courses, through research, lab work and other scientific queries, address issues of making existing energy technologies more efficient while bringing forth emerging alternate energy technologies in lieu of fossil fuels.
USC’s Price School of Public Policy ups the ante with its Sustainable Cities Graduate Certificate, which offers environmentally focused classes for grad students in a variety of disciplines. They encourage students to use their particular education and skills in careers that foster environmentally sustainable cities and can drive public policy.
Although the structures of the four-year and graduate programs vary from school to school, one thing almost all promise their grads—besides a degree that’s relevant and better odds at finding a job—is the opportunity to build a career that will be personally satisfying and start creating a more sustainable world now, not just after graduation.
Indeed, the success rate is encouraging. “Over 70 percent of our graduates surveyed are employed in an environmental field or are pursuing a graduate degree in a related field,” reports UCLA’s Nordby.
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