Our courses of study in the Department of Environmental Studies are designed to make people employable as environmental technical workers with a B.A. or B.S. without further graduate education. My general advice to graduates is to look for work during your senior year. A majority of the Hazardous Materials &endash; Water Quality students find work before they graduate, which is very gratifying.
While you are working, you will probably see people with graduate degrees who are doing interesting things which may be more advanced than your work. Talk to them. If they are young, let's say, under 30, you could take the same kind of degree they took and find work like theirs. If they are older than 30 or 35, the way that they got into their position may not be the way that you can get to that position today.
There are many different kinds of graduate degrees which are related to environmental quality work. Some are very specialized and scientific and technical. Others are policy oriented. It is one of the ironies of our society that there is very little environmental policy work, and most of it is done by older people who started out as technical people.
These are graduate programs which would further prepare a student to protect water from non-point pollution, and to understand pollution of soil and water from rural activities such as farming, logging, and road building.
San Francisco State University, Department of Geography
M.A. in Resource Management and Environmental Planning
This course of study includes water resources, plant ecology, environmental impact analysis, and many other courses available to undergraduates in ENSP at SSU. We have a few ENSP graduates who have taken this graduate degree, and they have gone on to become more environmental planners but it would be good preparation for non-source point pollution work.
http://www.sfsu.edu/%7Ebulletin/current/programs/geograp.htm#444
University of California at Davis
M.S. and Ph.D. in Hydrologic Sciences
We have had two graduates go into this program. It covers hydrology and watershed management which are water supply oriented skills, but could also be used to study how to control non-point source water quality problems such as the new Total Maximum Daily Load programs which are providing employment for our graduates. It could also be used to protect threatened and endangered species of freshwater fish. It is not technically an engineering degree, but it is very close.
http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/programs/hydro.htm
University of California at Davis
M.S. and Ph.D. in Soil Sciences
We have not yet had a graduate enter this program. The courses for these degrees cover the application of physics, chemistry, statistics and biology to soil science. Most of the faculty are agriculturally oriented, but there are opportunities to study soil pollution abatement, soil erosion control or some other useful environmental application of soil science.
http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/programs/soilsci.htm
University of California at Davis or Berkeley
M.S. and Ph.D. in Agricultural and Env. Chemistry
Davis and Berkeley also give degrees in the chemistry of agricultural chemicals, including pesticides used by farmers. They also study the effect of industrial chemicals on crops and soils. This would be suitable for environmental students who were double majors with chemistry.
The Davis website is:
http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/programs/agenchem.htm
Berkeley does not have a website for this department, but their email address is
pmb.stud@nature.berkeley.edu
You do not need to find a graduate school of environmental management. You can get a masters of public administration or a masters of business administration and do environmentally oriented work in a business or public agency. There are, however, some good specialized programs for environmental specialists who want to manage or regulate human activities to minimize their impact on nature.
University of San Francisco
M.S. in Environmental Management
We have had several graduates attend this night and Saturday school program in environmental management and science. It is intended for people who are already working in the field and need further education. It leads to an M.S. and is quite practical. Our graduates who have gone there are now employed in responsible managerial positions. There seems to be a good balance between environmental science and the legal, managerial aspects at this school. They liked the program though it was a hard two years of working full time all week and then going to school on the weekend.
http://www.usfca.edu/envsci/em/sanfran/index.htm
This is the study of toxins, and although such people may spend a great deal of time poisoning rats and mice (they do not use guinea pigs any more as far as I know) the object of such studies are mostly to protect people. These students need to be a biology or chemistry graduates. Perhaps it would be best to be a double major in those fields.
University of California at Davis or Berkeley
M.S. and Ph.D. in Toxicology
It looks as if the Berkeley course of study is more environmental and the Davis program pharmaceutical and occupational but a great deal depends on the individual faculty involved.
This is the science of the geography and sociology of disease. For example, Epidemiologists are the people who try to determine if a cancer cluster was caused by a specific polluter. They also study the probability what a pollutant will do to a human community. We have only one graduate (she was a double major with biology) I can think of who has such a degree though we have several graduates who do this kind of work.
University of California at Berkeley
School of Public Health
MPH Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. There is quite a bit of mathematics and biology in these courses. They include an optional program in international health problems.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7047/cgi-bin/passtest.cgi?div958207100.dtl
Many of the people who protect nature also protect people. Every city and county in the industrialized world, and most of the non-industrialized places as well have a public health officer, and his staff are environmental health specialists. We have several graduates who have this degree. They work county governments mostly. They supervise the clean up of leaking underground tank, the installation and maintenance of septic tanks and leach field. Some people in this profession check the cleanliness of restaurants, but I do not know of any of our graduates who do so. However, one of our graduates was, for a summer, in charge of water quality at the swimming pools in the city in which she worked.
University of California at Berkeley
School of Public Health
MPH Masters of Public Health in Environmental Health
They take courses on toxicology, Epidemiology, industrial hygiene, risk analysis, and health policy. Many people with this degree work in industry as industrial health managers.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7047/cgi-bin/passtest.cgi?div950866181.dtl
San Francisco State University
MPH Master of Public Health
The courses include Epidemiology and biostatistics, but this program is much more oriented to sociological analysis and community organization than most MPH degrees. This might be a much more effective set of courses for someone who really wanted to stop pollution by community action.
http://www.sfsu.edu/%7Ebulletin/current/programs/health.htm#3666
University of California at Los Angeles
School of Public Health
MPH and M.S. in Environmental Health
These programs are partly flexible. The students seem to choose to specialize in air pollution, environmental chemistry, environmental management, environmental toxicology, industrial hygiene, or water quality
http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/catalog/catalog-283.htm#pgfId-10780
University of California at Davis
M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences
This program also includes many application of mathematics, physics, and chemistry to the science of air. There are several courses specifically about pollution and pollution abatement. It is not an engineering degree but it should be helpful to those who want to work with engineers.