What jobs combine these areas of study

August 7, 2024 11:35 AM

My oldest is starting to look at schools. I know and they know with the price of higher Ed it's important to know what you'll be able to do with a given degree. So here is the question they wrote up for me to post.

"I’m going to college in three years and am starting to look at potential careers. I’m interested in both the fields of psychology and environmental/climate science. Are there any careers that y’all know of that combine the two fields?"

Back to me. I am also wondering what summer job may touch on these areas. Kid is happy to do traditional kid summer job type work but seeing some jobs of their interest in action would be good too.

posted by dstopps to Education (19 answers total)

Environmental psychology is an academic discipline. I know a few. You would be looking to study psychology and take as many environmental options as possible. I think there would be other jobs that use the same skill set but aren't academics. NGOs, etc
posted by biffa at 11:47 AM on August 7

They might look at the work of Ashlee Cunsolo, Dominique Davide Chavez, or Nancy Menning to find some inspiration.
posted by cocoagirl at 11:53 AM on August 7

Thinking a bit more broadly, to careers that incorporate both of these areas but might not necessarily be attainable without a different or advanced degree, first here are some careers on the environmental side of things, that definitely involve some work with understanding human impact/impact on humans:

Environmental health officer
Conservation officer
Ecologist/wildlife biologist
Ecology restoration officer
Environmental scientist
GIS specialist
Air pollution analyst
Climate change analyst

And leaning more into the psychology side of things:
Ecotherapist - and therapists who don't necessarily call themselves that, but focus on spending time outdoors with clients

Also, while we can imagine these kinds of positions, that doesn't necessarily mean there are many available. The Occupational Outlook Handbook is a great thing to browse and find out if you're trying for something that is widely available.

Also, any college department will likely have a list of possible careers on their website. I'd also focus on if they say what their graduates are actually doing with those degrees.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:03 PM on August 7 [3 favorites]

I would suggest looking into Environmental Economics with a focus on Behavioral Economics.

Economists have been studying how to get people to reduce their negative impacts on the climate, such as this study which showed that if you inform people of their electricity use relative to their neighbors they use less

I'm an economist but work in different area. Most of my environmental econ friends got some experience either doing activist work or working in the field getting water samples or the like.
posted by akabobo at 12:20 PM on August 7 [9 favorites]

Geography comes to mind. As an example, the program at Penn State has a number of multidisciplinary certificates/minors.
posted by paradeofblimps at 12:28 PM on August 7 [4 favorites]

environmental policy analyst [environmentalscience.org]
posted by HearHere at 12:39 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Might be interesting to look at the statement of research directions from Stanford's new School of Sustainability, which gives an idea of where they expect academic interest to be going. Some of those definitely have a psychology / human behavior angle.

New climate and sustainability research efforts will focus on eight ‘Solution Areas’

Community-based resilience and adaptation programs are another place to look. For example here's a project spearheaded by UC Berkeley working with tribal nations in the pinon pine / juniper ecosystem:

Climate Action research grants assist Tribal nations with resource management
posted by graphweaver at 12:51 PM on August 7 [2 favorites]

Is their interest in psychology more about clinical one-on-one treatment, human behavior more generally, or more statistics and research?

It’s totally fine if they don’t know yet! That’s part of the value of college is trying out a bunch of classes to see what they like. But one thing that may be helpful (I learned this from a college career coach) is to think about what they want their day to day to look like and to not just focus on a specific topic of interest.

Do they like the idea of a 9-5 sitting a desk quietly doing data analysis and writing papers vs being out and about in the field talking to people or traveling for example.
posted by forkisbetter at 1:30 PM on August 7 [4 favorites]

Animal psychology is totally a field! It differs from human psychology because you are reliant on observations rather than using surveys alone/as well. It is probably not what your person is looking for but in case it sounds interesting look for animal behaviour classes. And be wary of evo-psych.

Once they are in university, look for jobs with researchers as a lab or field technician. They wouldn’t need any direct experience but getting to know their profs a bit might be key to finding and landing these jobs.
posted by hydrobatidae at 1:36 PM on August 7

Landscape Architecture is at the intersection of psychology and environmental/climate science. Some of us do a bit more than gardens; many of my jobs are town scale, sometimes regional. Some work is with indigenous people and their space. In all of these there's a real need for psych approaches, as well as nature and the world (I don't use the word environment).
posted by unearthed at 1:41 PM on August 7 [3 favorites]

I agree with forkisbetter on thinking about what they want their day-to-day work environment to be like. In the meantime, if they are at all interested in the "field work" side of environmental science, high school and college jobs are the perfect opportunity to get that kind of experience and learn what they do and don't like. Look for summer jobs doing trail maintenance, conservation work, environmental education, etc. Americorps can be a good source of jobs in this area.

Other academic disciplines to explore: Urban Planning, Geography (especially human geography), Landscape Architecture, Science Communication. I also agree with akabobo that Environmental Economics is worth considering.
posted by mjcon at 1:47 PM on August 7 [2 favorites]

I am also wondering what summer job may touch on these areas
counselor at an outdoor-focused camp

also, if there are fields they are interested in, it can be great to do informational interviews with people doing the work
posted by HearHere at 1:50 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

I spent 15 years working for environmental organizations. They could do pretty much any kind of non-technical, non-lawyer job in an organization like that with that sort of educational background. So: communications/media/marketing, policy, organizing, fundraising, HR. The key things would be your internships, jobs, and extracurriculars. Use those to figure out what kind of work you like to do.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation requires a lot of understanding of and working with human psychology and will continue to do so in ways that we are only starting to understand. A healthy understanding of psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics will be really important for people working in governments, businesses, and nonprofits that deal with the effects of climate change. For instance, questions like: how do you get people to see the value in energy efficiency? How do extreme weather events impact communities?

There's some really interesting social sciences work being done around climate change and activism if you are interested in that. Check out the Yale Program on Climate Change and, if you want to delve deep into academics, the Politics of the Environment program at UCSB.

But again, I think your work, internships, and extracurriculars will be the most important thing here. When I'm hiring recent grads, that's always what I look at first. I'd aim to go to a college near a big city (DC, SF, and Seattle would be especially good), that has good programs to get undergrads into interesting opportunities. Enjoy your studies and let your interests and passions drive your direction!
posted by lunasol at 4:31 PM on August 7 [3 favorites]

While it's useful to have a Plan A or a direction to go when you hit campus, what you major in doesn't matter nearly as much as following your interests and your talents. The perfect job for you might not even have been invented yet, but an interdisciplinary, experiential small liberal arts college education will give strong critical thinking and communication skills, the ability to apply knowledge gleaned from one field in another field, and the ability to transfer knowledge from the classroom to the "real world." And you can start out a psych major, still do a lot of environmental science coursework, and transition more easily between majors, if you decide to, than you can do at most larger institutions.
posted by BrashTech at 6:11 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

I think encourage them to follow their interests and remain open to different career paths as they present themselves. Yes, there are fields which are highly credentialed, but also so many that aren’t. At minimum with those two disciplines they’d likely find a place in research and academia, especially if they find student jobs in their department.

The job I’m in now didn’t exist when I was going to school, and I can say similar of many of the friends I grew up with. If your oldest follows their interests and continues to develop and upgrade their skills even after school, they’ll be in good shape.
posted by eekernohan at 6:37 PM on August 7

I know and they know with the price of higher Ed it's important to know what you'll be able to do with a given degree.

All respect, but outside of the few directly-professional BA programs like nursing, this is the wrong way to think about it.

Few people who graduate with a degree from a college of arts and sciences have jobs where their boss regularly demands that they use the specific skills and knowledge from their university major. Very few econ majors have jobs where they futz with indifference curves for a living, very few literature majors analyze novels for a living, very few psychology majors do any kind of psychological analysis for a living. This is fine; American universities are trying to produce generalists rather than specialists, which is why your major itself is only 1/4 - 1/3 of your degree.

Most people end up with jobs that there aren't (many) undergraduate majors for -- HR, or compliance work, or the government's side of compliance, or any of a thousand jobs that are just hard to explain to people who aren't in that industry.

The things I usually tell undergrads or kiddos on Accepted Students Day or similar are:

* Major in something you like / tolerate well enough to really bust ass on it, so you have a shiny 3.8 to show recruiters

* Get as much quantitative training as you can tolerate, and then one more course that kinda hurts

* Network. A lot of the value of American universities is frankly in corruption rather than education -- rooming with the child of some big-name lawyer or executive vice president somewhere or whatever is a huge in into that firm, agency, or industry.

* Similarly, do internships.

An extra thing is:

* Dunno where you're looking. You or your kid might end up tempted by an undergrad business degree. The thing to remember is that at some universities, the undergrad business program is just one of many perfectly cromulent programs... but at others, it's where they dump kids who couldn't succeed at an academic major. You'll be shocked to learn that schools don't really tell you which is which, but an undergrad business program that you have to separately apply for is a good but noisy signal.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:08 PM on August 7 [5 favorites]

Anything that involves psychology will require more than an undergraduate degree. Environmental science would be a hard science degree and would probably impart more skills that are hard to come by. But in that field as well, I would imagine the majority of jobs require more than a bachelor's degree, since the jobs would be based on a specific expertise. The only bachelor's degrees I know of that lead directly to a career path are in education and engineering. Could your kid study environmental engineering?
posted by winterportage at 7:46 AM on August 8

Few people who graduate with a degree from a college of arts and sciences have jobs where their boss regularly demands that they use the specific skills and knowledge from their university major.

Right, but there are definitely jobs in environmental science and psychology that would require an advance degree. May not matters as much for masters but it's going to be a lot harder to get into a PhD program without the relevant undergrad degree (and research experience). Not impossible - I managed to do it, but only because of about a decade of work experience and networking (through my work history) that put me in touch with my current advisor.

So that is something to think about. But also, so many people change directions after high school and during college, so i do think they should keep an open mind.
posted by litera scripta manet at 7:48 PM on August 8

My daughter was interested in the same general areas. She ended up majoring in animal science and now trains horses, so her career goals shifted some.

But her summer jobs might be closer to what your child may be interested in:

-Marketing department for a large forest preserve district - She tried to find ways to encourage folks to come to the district's various nature-related events. (She was more of a gofer, but still absorbed a lot.)

-Outreach in the same district - she manned a FPD booth at events all over the area. The booth was geared toward encouraging children to ask about nature and to get out in nature, so it featured little craft projects or other activities to encourage children to interact with her. She also led activities for all ages in actual forest preserves, like butterfly watching and plant identification hikes.

-Camp counselor at a nature center - developed and led classes and activities for kids, including hiking, bird-watching, nature-related art and crafts, etc.

-One year during college, she volunteered at the local animal shelter for internship credit.

I think what all these jobs had in common was talking to people, and finding a way to communicate with a specific person to get her point across. (I guess that's where the psychology came in?) She learned to love the outreach and education part just as much as the nature part.

Note - none of these earned much in the way of a salary...
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:19 AM on August 9