The grant will help recruit, retain, and train the top environmental scientists of tomorrow.
AUSTIN, Texas--The Environmental Science degree program (EVS) at The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded $580,260 from the National Science Foundation to recruit, retain, and train the top environmental scientists of tomorrow.
The majority of the four-year award will support students in the form of 13 annual scholarships that will cover the tuition of each recipient. The grant will also support efforts to develop and expand EVS, which was launched in 2010 and is operated by the Environmental Science Institute.
“Environmental challenges such as water quality protection and land use management are becoming increasingly important in our daily lives,” said Anna Schneider, a senior in the EVS program. “There is a growing demand for people who can help understand and solve these problems, and I’m proud to be one of them.”
The EVS degree program, which leads to a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science, is open to undergraudates in the College of Natural Sciences, the Jackson School of Geosciences, and the College of Liberal Arts each year.
Students complete fundamental scientific coursework, including chemistry, biology, calculus, and physics, and expand their perspective with more advanced coursework in ecology, hydrogeology, geographic information systems, economics, sustainability policy, climates and oceans, and economics.
Throughout this coursework, the students are also given a variety of field and lab experiences that allow them to put their studies into immediate practice. These experiences take students into aquifers, watersheds, coastal zones, energy facilities, farms, and sites of sustainable development.
EVS students are therefore poised to meet the growing national and international demand for professional environmental scientists, with more than 16,700 new environmental scientist and specialist jobs expected between 2010-2020.
For more information contact: Deborah Salzberg, Education Coordinator, (512) 471–5847, deborah@esi.utexas.edu.
Comments 1
I am wondering where the expectation of "more than 16,700 new environmental scientist and specialist jobs" during 2010-2020 comes from. Poor economic conditions hurt the environmental industry because it is a money spender, not a money maker for consultant firms. I am concerned that the market will not bear the number of students going into this field.