Description

Working for People and the Planet

Welcome! This guide is here to help you navigate the environmental career field and to provide you with resources and tools to help prepare you for your career path journey. The environmental field is constantly changing and intersecting across boundaries. From community organizing to fieldwork to creating policy, the array of possible careers in the environmental field is vast and diverse. Such an interdisciplinary field can often make it difficult to determine your interests and understand how to effectively prepare for future careers. With this guide, we hope to ease that process by providing you with possible opportunities for education and experiences related to the environmental field. Here you can get connected with local community organizations, campus groups, and relevant events that will direct you during your career search and preparation. Keep in mind that there is not simply one correct way to prepare for a career, and each path is unique in its own way. There are many ways to participate in a career that works for people and the planet, and we hope that this guide will help aid your search. Happy exploring!

Collection

Because the environmental field is wide-ranging, there is not simply one educational requirement that is necessary to prepare you for a future career. The University of Iowa offers a variety of environmental or environmentally related programs that can help put you on the path to an environmental career!

Majors and Minors

Certificates

There are many ways to gain experience and build skills that will be useful in a future environmental career:

Volunteer or Intern for a Local Organization or Group

  • Environment Iowa: Environment Iowa is a non-profit organization that advocates for a greener Iowa. Through community organizing, Environment Iowa educates the public on environmental issues and empowers citizens to make their own personal impact. They continuously offer opportunities for volunteering and summer internships, which are great ways to gain experiences in community organizing and issue-based advocacy, as well as build communication and writing skills. The organization also has a sister 501(c)(3) organization called Environment Iowa Research and Policy Center.
  • Iowa Environmental Council The Iowa Environmental Council is the largest and most comprehensive environmental coalition in the state. The non-profit organization works to amplify the voices of Iowans and advocates for clean energy, clean water and land stewardship, environmental justice, and a healthy climate. If you are interested in IEC’s work, reaching out to members of the staff and regularly checking the IEC website are great ways to stay updated on job openings and opportunities for involvement.
  • Iowa Sierra Club The Iowa Sierra Club is a chapter of the national environmental group, which is one of the largest grass roots environmental organizations in the country. Their website provides a number of opportunities to get involved, including volunteering, organizing rallies, and advocacy. If you are interested in volunteering, contact iowa.chapter@sierraclub.org.
  • Iowa Waste Reduction Center: The IWRC is an environmental consulting and education organization. Make sure to keep an eye out on their website if you are interested, as they often have student positions available.

Seek Out Campus Groups

Enroll in Relevant Classes

If any of the university’s majors, minors, or certificates caught your eye, here are the course listings for each:

Connect with the Career Center

The Pomerantz Career Center has a great program focused solely on jobs in the Environmental and Sustainability field. At the center, you can connect with professional Community Career Coaches and experienced students who will provide you with one-on-one career services. Follow this link for even more career resources, including campus initiatives, sample occupations and industries, and the newest updates on career fairs and internship opportunities! https://careers.uiowa.edu/environment-sustainability

Now comes the part that probably scares most of you: the job search. But fear not, because we are here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be scary or complicated.

The first step, and what will probably be the hardest, is figuring out what exactly it is you want to do or be involved in. The field of environmental and sustainability careers is vast, which can make it very overwhelming, but the bright side is that you have so many options! Do you want to go into environmental policy? Maybe you want to become a community organizer, or maybe you want to be a sustainability officer within a business or corporation. It’s all up to you!

An easy way to go job-searching is with job search engines. If you are still in school here at Iowa, take a look at Handshake. If not, you can also take a look at Indeed, Monster, or Glassdoor.

For a search engine that is geared more towards social justice careers, check out Idealist or Work for Good. Lastly, we would recommend taking a look at Americorps and seeing if any of those listings stick out to you.

Now, maybe you’re still on the fence about what you’re interested in or want more information about a certain organization or company. That brings us to informational interviews.

Informational Interviews

An informational interview is simply an informal conversation you have with someone to get a better idea of the field they work in and what their job is like. It may feel awkward to reach out to a stranger, but they are great research opportunities and can help you start networking. These are not meant to be job interviews or a way to find job openings. This is meant to be a recon mission: observe and learn, but don’t go looking for action.

Any easy way to start this process is a good old-fashioned Google search. Include the area of your interest as well as ‘company’ or ‘organization.’ If you would like, you could also include a geographical location, but it isn’t necessary. For example, when we were looking for informational interviews, we searched ‘sustainable farming nonprofit.’ It didn’t need to be overly specific or detailed. We put our interest–sustainable farming–followed by a type of organization–nonprofit.

From there, look to see what interests you. Maybe you’ll find a really interesting business or maybe you’ll get a better idea of your interests and can narrow your search field down. Once you find something that you like, look on their website for either a ‘Contact Us’ or a ‘Staff’ tab. If there is a ‘Contact Us’ tab, it should give you instructions on ways to reach them. If there isn’t, you can also check to see if they have staff contact information listed.

Now the somewhat scary part: actually reaching out. Luckily for you, there are templates and examples online of how you should word your request. Here, we will give you the format we used, but if you don’t like it, there are plenty of other resources out there for you to use:

Hello! My name is [name]. I am currently a senior at the University of Iowa, and I’m getting my degree in Social Justice and nonprofits. I am exploring opportunities in nonprofit work dealing with sustainable farming. I’m hoping to get a better idea of what practical work in this field looks like, and I wanted to hear from people currently working on this issue. I thought you would be a good source of information about the current state of affairs, upcoming jobs in the field, and other people I might contact.

I’m hoping you might have 15 to 30 minutes to meet with me on the phone or over Zoom in the next few weeks. Please let me know if this might be possible and what dates and times are most convenient for you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you,
[Your name]

Send this out to more than one business or organization. Some will respond and some won’t. That’s okay! The people who do respond will do so because they want to help you out.

As for the actual conversation, we won’t list all the questions you can ask because there are a lot of them, but once again, there are many resources online that will give you a plethora of questions to ask. Just remember that they are taking time out of their day to talk to you and don’t go over the agreed time limit. Remember to thank them for their time at the end of your conversation. 

LinkedIn

A fantastic resource to use is LinkedIn. It’s great for networking and reaching out to people in your desired field. An interesting feature is that they allow you to filter people out by the school they attended. So, when you go searching for individuals who have worked or are working in the environmental field, try filtering it to only University of Iowa alumni. A great thing about being a Hawk is that it makes you a part of a huge support system. Reaching out to alumni is most likely going to give you far better results than reaching out to someone else (but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t–go for it!)

Resumes

The Pomerantz Career Center has some great information on building and creating a good resume, but there are some specifics (https://eco.ca/blog/writing-a-resume-specific-to-environmental-work/) you can include to stand out (https://enhancv.com/resume-skills/sustainability/) for an environmental career. One point we would make is to not stress too much over the scientific or technical side of things (unless you’re applying for a research position, in which case, talk nerdy to me.) If you think you don’t have any relevant skills, think again. There are multiple aspects to every job, and creativity and adaptability are as important in STEM fields as they are anywhere else. It may feel strange talking yourself up, but this is the time to go for it and really sell yourself as the absolute legend you are. 

Interviews

There are plenty of great resources that go through interviews and interview etiquette on the UI Pomerantz Career Services site. This is all great information you should go through before you go to an interview. When it comes to an interview for a job in this field specifically, there isn’t any specialized advice to give other than to know why you want that job. There are plenty of times where passion is more important than experience. Why do you care about the environment? What is it about sustainability that drew your interest? Have that passion at the forefront and some stories ready to go, and you should be fine. Also, it never hurts to practice a couple (or a hundred) times. Just don’t psych yourself out about it. You’re an absolute legend, remember?

Now go forth, you precious eco-warriors, and get the job of your dreams. And when some university student comes to you with questions about your amazing job and how you got there, send them our way. We’ll be able to help.