Environmental Career Information
Newsletters and On-line Publications
A number of environmental job publications and career centers publish job vacancy announcements through newsletters or Web sites. Some are available primarily through paid subscriptions. Others offer their services without cost. Three of these are listed below. The first two are available by subscription but also regularly post a portion of their current edition on line without charge. The third posts environmental job opportunities exclusively on line and at no cost to users.
- The Job Seeker (Bill Oakes, Owner), 403 Oakwood Street, Warrens, WI 54666; (608) 378-4450; bill@thejobseeker.net
- Environmental Career Opportunities, ECO Inc, 700 Graves Street, Charlottesville, Virginia 22902; (800) 315-9777; ecosubscriptions@mindspring.com
- Green Careers Center, 2 Eaton Street, Suite 711, Hampton, VA 23669; (757) 727-7895; eccinfo@environmentalcareer.com
Other Internet Resources
Local
Looking for a job at UW-Madison? Check the university's list of faculty, academic staff, and limited-term position vacancies.
Another potential academic employer is Edgewood College. Job openings include positions for faculty and staff.
Job opportunities with UW-Extension include positions in many areas, including environmental and agricultural fields. Other important job links include UW Colleges as well as UW Systems, including links to all UW System institutions.
For part-time student jobs, both on and off-campus, check the UW Student Job Center listings.
The home page of UW-Madison's L&S Career Services Office offers job search strategies, links to many employment networks, and job listings.
For other local job opportunities, check the City of Madison's employment listings and the Now Hiring page at madison.com. Sustain Dane's Green Pages also can be helpful in identifying potential local employers.
Jobs with Wisconsin state government can be found in WISCJOBS. Each agency may also feature its own employment page, such as the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
For other employment in Wisconsin, see the Wisconsin Job Center.
For positions with the county, see the Dane County Employment Opportunities.
Environment
An extensive listing of current environmental jobs can be found at E Jobs.
A great web site for job searches is CYBER-SIERRA'S Natural Resources Job Search.
The National Council for Science and the Environment offers an internship program with opportunities for permanent positions with NCSE. They also post job announcements on this web site.
The website links at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency include a list of current vacancies through the EPA jobs website as well as through other federal job posting sites.
Most environmental organizations now regularly post their job and internship openings online. Here are just a few of those:
- World Wildlife Fund
- World Wildlife Fund-International
- Wildlife Conservation Society
- National Audubon Society
- The Nature Conservancy
- National Parks Conservation Association
- National Wildlife Federation
- International Crane Foundation
- Center for Whole Communities
- LightHawk
- American Rivers
- U.S. Green Building Council
- Earthjustice
Some of the local environmental organizations that regularly post jobs and internships include the following:
- Aldo Leopold Nature Center
- Natural Resources Foundation
- North American Lake Management Society
- Gathering Waters Conservancy
- Wisconsin Wetlands Association
- Environmental Law and Policy Center
The Orion Grassroots Network lists jobs and internships with hundreds of environmental groups.
The Ecological Society of America posts career opportunities in a variety of fields, and includes both job and internship positions. The Society for Ecological Restoration offers another collection of job postings.
GreenBiz, a green business network maintains GreenBiz JobLink a free job-posting and resume-posting service for environmental professionals, from recent grads to career changers.
For leads to business and environmental jobs and internships with sustainable employers, see Green Dream Jobs.
Earthworks-jobs.com features jobs in energy, oil, mining, earth system science, environmental science, remediation, and other related areas.
The Conservation Job Board profiles the latest jobs from the fields of conservation, ecology, wildlife biology, marine science, forestry, environmental education, protected area management and more.
The Society of Wetland Scientists web site lists job openings in wetland science.
UW-Madison's Water Library offers a web page listing water-related jobs.
The American Water Resources Association also maintains a jobs board for careers in water resources, with frequent updates posted to their current job listings.
For positions in environmental education, see EE Jobs and the EE Jobs Database. For environmental education positions in California, see the Association for Outdoor and Environmental Education joblist. Another good collection of jobs and internships in environmental education and interpretation s maintained by UW-Stevens Point.
A number of land trust organizations regularly post job announcements and some, like Gathering Waters, also include links to many other conservation organizations -- all potential employers.
For job vacancies in energy, check the following web sites:
- Energy Center of Wisconsin
- Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation
- Alliant Energy
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab
- American Wind Energy Association
- Seventh Generation Energy Systems
Texas A & M offers a very comprehensive listing of environmental and natural resources career information and job opportunities on their Job Board.
The Peace Corps frequently offers a variety of environmental positions for volunteers.
Science and Academia
Academic360.com features a collection of web sites that post job announcements, some of which involve work in academia.
Classified ads in Science magazine, also published on line, are a good source of information about jobs in academia and other research organizations.
The British journal Nature publishes a careers magazine and web site called naturejobs with information about science jobs and vacancies.
The Chronicle of Higher Education web site includes most of the classified ads for academic positions that appear in the print version of the Chronicle.
The HigherEdJobs web site presents another good listing and search engine for faculty and staff positions.
And you will find even more academic jobs by exploring individual college and university web sites like this one created by the University of Texas. Also useful is this list of college and university environmental studies programs maintained by Brown University.
Still looking? Then check out the human resources pages of universities. Some of them include not only their own academic job listings but also links to their favorite academic job banks. The University of California-Santa Cruz provides a long list of job banks useful for academic job searches. And consider subscribing to one or more of the listservers included below.
Listservers
Our own Nelson_Alumni listserver includes announcements of environmental jobs and internships.
Earth Science Job Email List (Es_jobs_net) includes general earth science jobs with a focus on academic positions.
LSU maintains CLIMLIST for posting climate and atmospheric jobs as well as other climate science-related information
ECOLOG-L is a discussion list that also posts faculty and grad student positions, including some short term jobs.
Another interesting discussion list is COMFOOD, a listserver focusing on community food security. Although dedicated to discussion, it also posts related job and internship opportunities.
The name suggests some but certainly not all of the environmental jobs listed by Ecohealth.
International
For international opportunities, check the following web sites:
- Go Global! The International Careers Website
- International Environmental Jobs through ECO
- United Nations
- International Institute for Sustainable Development
- International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
- Rainforest Alliance
- Environmental Career Opportunities in the United Kingdom
- Green Directory
Miscellaneous
The Great Lakes Information Network devotes a portion of its web site to a job bank for postings of careers in the Great Lakes region.
The State Cartographer's Office lists positions in GIS and mapping. Additional jobs in remote sensing may be found on the job page of the Space Science and Engineering Center. Another good resource is the GIS Jobs Clearinghouse.
GeographyJobs posts jobs in environmental science, GIS, remote sensing, environmental planning, and other areas related to geography.
The web site of UW-Madison's La Follette School of Public Affairs provides an extensive array of links to many categories of employment, including federal, international, nonprofit, and private sector.
There are many job banks online and one of the more interesting ones may be The Riley Guide, including its links to jobs in interdisciplinary areas such as earth, environmental, and water sciences.
For federal jobs and employment information, see the Web sites of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the FedWorld Information Network.
The Congressional Research Service offers a variety of employment opportunities in politics, teaching, writing, and science.
The Idealist, a project of Action Without Borders, features a home page with links to 10,000 nonprofit organizations around the world. These offer a wide variety of employment and internship opportunities, many in environmental areas. Additional non-profit job opportunities are available through the Non-Profit Career Network.
And finally, if you have a degree in environmental studies and are wondering where to begin, you may be interested in the following career guide put together by the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California-Santa Barbara: What Can You Do with a Degree in Environmental Studies?