Environmental Studies

Engaged Environmental Studies

Engaged Environmental Studies takes what you’re learning in your courses and puts it into practice through internships, research, study away, winter term, career exploration, and beyond.

Here’s a sampling of recent projects, field experiences, and post-graduate destinations for environmental studies majors.

RISE at Oberlin
Research. Internships. Study Away. Experiential Learning.

Ways Environmental Studies Majors Rise

Research

  • “Indigenous Resilience, Adaptation, and Community Solidarity in the Face of Climate Change”
  • “Rethinking Redevelopment: New Urbanism, Neoliberalism, and Sustainable Urban Design in Cleveland, Ohio”
  • “Changing Carbon Allocation to Nuts and Woody Tissue in an Experimental Hazelnut Orchard”
  • “Exploring Japanese Local Food Systems through the Lens of Organic Rice Farming”
  • “Constructing Alternate Futures: Speculative Fiction within the Environmental Justice Movement”
  • “Africatown, Alabama, Oral History Archive Project”

Internships

  • Foresight Design Initiative (Chicago): sustainable design projects
  • San Francisco Estuary Institute (San Francisco): fieldwork, research, and grant writing
  • Amman Center for Peace and Development (Jordan): building peace among Israeli, Palestinian, & Jordanian citizens
  • Toronto Green Community (Canada): advocacy for sustainable communities
  • National Science Foundation (Blacksburg, Va.): REU, greenhouse gas dynamics in drinking water reservoir
  • North Carolina Botanical Garden (N.C.): conservation and land management intern

Study Away

  • CIEE: Sustainability and the Environment (Costa Rica)
  • SIT: Sustainable Development and Social Change (India)
  • Frontiers Abroad: Geology of New Zealand
  • Danenberg Oberlin-in-London program
  • SIT: Amazonian Ecology and Natural Resource Management (Brazil)
  • Cornell University: Earth and Environmental Systems (Hawaii)
  • CIEE: Development and Globalization (Thailand)
  • Earlham College: Border Studies (Mexico and Ariz.)

Experiential Learning

  • Environmental Dashboard (Oberlin and beyond): ecological design, feedback technology, and software development
  • AJLC Living Machine: fecal coliform culturing, biological oxygen demand, ion chromatography, ammonium testing
  • Vel’s Purple Oasis (Cleveland): urban gardening and independent research in an urban African American community
  • George Jones Farm (Oberlin): farming assistants, greenhouse agriculture, aquaculture

First Destinations of Recent Environmental Studies Majors

  • Graduate Schools:
    • MS at Univ. Of Michigan School of Environment and Sustainability
    • MEM at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
    • Master of City Planning at MIT
    • MS in resource conservation at Univ. Of Montana
    • MS in nature, society, and environmental policy at Oxford
    • PhD in English at U.C. Davis
    • PhD in science/ technology studies at Cornell
    • MS at London School of Economics
    • PhD in Climate and Environment Group at Brown
  • Fellowships:
    • Watson Fellowship
    • Shansi Fellowship: China, Indonesia
    • Shansi Fellowship: Japan, Fulbright ETA: Colombia
    • Truman Fellowship
  • Positions:
    • Conservation diversity fellow, Open Space Initiative, N.Y.
    • Marketing associate, Pure Growth Organic, N.Y.
    • Geotechnical engineering technician, Md.
    • TEDx applications reviewer, Calif.
    • Urban planner, WXY Studio, N.Y.
    • Planning specialist, Detroit Building Authority
    • International coordinator, Roots & Shoots, Jane Goodall Institute