Giving in Action: Environmental Studies
Above: ENVS Professor, Joanna Lambert, climbed to the Base Camp at Mt. Everest to attend and speak at the "World's Highest Climate Summit" on May 29, 2022. Photo courtesy of Joanna Lambert.
Student Success
In the last year, Environmental Studies awarded...
7
Scholarships Awarded
4
Fellowships Awarded
Ongoing Projects or Initiatives
In the short space time since it began with students in Fall 2016, the The Masters of the Environment (MENV) Graduate Program has become a nationally-recognized leader and an innovator in professional education focused on sustainability and environmental management.
#1
MENV is described as "the most successful professional master’s program on campus." We have seen year over year growth in both program revenue and number of students. It is now the largest residential sustainability graduate program in the Mountain West and the largest residential graduate program at the University.
89%
MENV’s employment rate (89%) rivals top professional graduate programs in environmental management. MENV graduates are now in careers that make an impact. Some examples include: the Colorado Policy Strategist for American Whitewater and the Tribal Drought Coordinator for a federal agency.
1st
MENV was the first professional program on campus to create a staff position focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Current initiatives include: >5000 hours of training, education, workshops training to 500 students, faculty and staff; reducing graduate school entrance barriers for candidates from diverse backgrounds; creating inclusive hiring protocol for all staff and faculty hires; and creating a DEI student leadership team.
$2.5M
We have raised $2.5M to create the new Outdoor Recreation Economy (ORE) program. The ORE program provides access to learning opportunities for individuals at whatever stage of their career and at different price points and offers stackable online graduate certificates with the complete master's degree offered at 1/3 the price of the residential degree.
Donor-Supported Projects & Opportunities
Our professional MENV program was funded by the VF Foundation to establish the Diversity Leadership Fellows program. In September 2021, five fellows were selected.
Beginning in the 2021/22 school year (with promise to continue for five years total), we received the Patricia Sheffels Visiting Scholar Fund to support a keynote speaker for the ENVS Colloquium. This year's keynote speaker will be Katharine Wilkinson, an author, strategist, teacher and co-editor of the best-selling anthology All We Can Save. This funding is intended to support a top interdisciplinary environmental scholar to give a keynote lecture each school year. This keynote lecture will be hosted by the department, and will be open to the wider university community.
In ENVS—particularly evident in recent years—we recognize the importance of integrating dimensions of justice and anti-racism into all aspects of the research, teaching and outreach or engagement we carry out. To that end, this year we have partnered with Mission Zero (donor Scott King) to establish an upper-division undergraduate ENVS course for ENVS majors interested in experiential learning in the Boulder and Front Range of Colorado. This course will be piloted in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 and is called "Confronting Environmental Racism."
