EIU Environmental Studies Minor

Employment Opportunities and Relevance to Your Major

The environment is one of the most critical arenas facing the 21st century. Witness Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the proliferation of interdisciplinary environmental courses, and the growing popularity and necessity of the “green movement.” Students will find practical applications and relevance as government agencies and corporations seek reduced impacts on, and become more responsive to the environment.

As the environment becomes an increasingly salient issue, consumers will increasingly demand green products. Hence, corporations will respond with divisions of “environmental relations,” as they have done with “consumer relations.” As the infrastructure of recycling emerges nationwide, all communities will become viable recycling centers and those recycling programs will have to be developed, managed and administered. New economies will be recognized, not only for the value of resources recycled, but for the value of resources kept out of landfills and incinerators.

More fundamental than altering the actions impacting the environment is changing the cultural and ethical values driving those actions. Those value shifts will best be informed by a diversity of disciplinary perspectives. Hence, this minor is well suited for majors in business, health studies, the natural sciences, and the social sciences.