Breadcrumb
Department of Environmental Studies
Understanding the environment—from science to society, policy to culture.
Environmental Studies provides students with tools for understanding the complex relationships between the environment and human and social systems.
Our department, which includes both a B.A. program and an M.A. program, cultivates critical analysis of environmental problems using approaches from a variety of disciplines, helps students discern environmental messages and communicate them effectively, and enables them to act as informed citizens and professionals.
Degree Programs
Environmental Studies, B.A.
This interdisciplinary program gives students the opportunity to explore the relationship between social and ecological systems, and how each student will become a uniquely-trained “change-maker” in those systems.
Choose from five career-based emphases:
- Appropriate Technology
- Community Organizing
- Ecology and Conservation Science
- Geospatial Analysis
- Media Production
Environment & Community, M.A.
Environment & Community is a two-year master’s degree that focuses on the diverse relationships between environment and community using interdisciplinary perspectives.
For Humboldt students, we offer a Blended Degree Pathway where you can earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in five (instead of six) years, or, for transfer students, a BA and MA in three years instead of four.
Minors & Certificates
Decolonizing Sustainability Speaker Series
Presented by the Department of Native Studies and the Environment & Community Graduate Program, this annual series highlights and unpacks intersections of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and systems of power/privilege/oppression within the discourse and rhetoric of contemporary sustainability, environmental, and climate change movements.
Applied Knowledge
Students have the opportunity to teach classes through Humboldt’s eco-demonstration home or Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. They can also get involved with the Dendroecology Lab, where scientists are researching the effects of climate change on tree growth.
Interdisciplinary Research
Our Environment & Community M.A. students have a broad array of interdisciplinary interests, connected by a common commitment to work towards sustainable and just environment and community relationships.
Place-Based Learning Community: People & Planet
As an ENST first-year student, you’ll participate in hands-on activities with your peers before classes even start and in some cases, have the opportunity to live in the same residence halls with your peers. ENST students will join four other departments for People & Planet, which focuses on learning how sustainability is local and global, while addressing specific case studies in fields like agriculture, clean energy, and climate justice.
Career Options
From conservation services, to local food sustainability programs, working with autistic children, directing student finances at a California college, and building a self-sustaining home on wheels, our bachelor’s and master’s graduates are pursuing a wide variety of careers.
Achievements
Sarah Jaquette Ray
Environmental Studies
Environmental Studies Chair Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray will moderate a discussion with Joe Hendersen, Nikki Hoskins, Jade Sasser, Rebecca Weston, and Finn Does on how the climate crisis has been mobilized in service of authoritarian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia and misogyny. Learn more and register here: https://www.climatepsychology.us/cpa-workshops-and-talks-aNVzu/unnaming…
Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray
Environmental Studies
Dr. Ray joined grief scholars and movement leaders Breeshia Wade, Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Myrtle Sodhi, Jennifer England and host Viyda Shah on the podcast, Hospicing Leadership. This episode focused on questions such as "How do leaders create a vision for hospicing grief in the midst of crisis?" You can listen here: https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading/podcast-episodes/hospicing-leadershi…
Hunter Circe, Sean Stippick, Sarah Lasley
Environmental Studies
A film made by Environmental Studies majors Hunter Circe and Sean Stippick in Professor Sarah Lasley's "Social Change Filmmaking" class last spring was accepted into the Earth Connection Film Festival. Their film, Troglodyte, follows a man paralyzed by anxiety over a looming climate disaster. His mental turmoil and isolation, brought on by an obsessive consumption of climate doom media, manifests as a physical sea cave, which he ultimately escapes when his television breaks. Hunter and Sean will receive $300 for being accepted and have their film premiered on July 20 at the Buskirk Chumley Theatre in Bloomington, IN.
Sarah Jaquette Ray
Environmental Studies
In her new book that came out on May 13, "The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World," Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray draws on a decade of learning from Humboldt students about how to be an educator in times of climate disruption. Given CPH's ongoing and pivotal legacy of student activism, it is clear that college students need a pedagogy that supports them in meeting the polycrisis. Bringing emotions research, neuroscience, and liberatory pedagogy to the center, the book helps climate educators in particular be more embodied and trauma-informed.
Sarah Jaquette Ray and Jennifer Atkinson
Environmental Studies
How do educators help their students navigate a climate-changed world? What should a climate-justice, trauma-informed pedagogy look like for the world students desire, not just fear? Dr. Sarah Jaquette Ray and UW-Bothell colleague Dr. Jennifer Atkinson address these topics in the intro to their forthcoming book, The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators, which has been published on Climate Psychology Alliance's website. You can read it here: https://www.climatepsychology.us/blog/introduction-to-the-existential-t…
Aerin Monroe
Environmental Studies
https://newsfromnativecalifornia.com/review-sowing-seeds-racial-justice-and-the-environmental-movement/
“Sowing Seeds is a new docu-series on YouTube produced, written and hosted by Aerin Monroe (Environmental studies scholar at Cal Poly Humboldt) in partnership with Save California Salmon. Filmed and edited by Valentina Dimas, each episode offers insight into different aspects of environmental justice by centering Black and Indigenous scientists, educators, and activists all working to bring about positive change within Humboldt County.” Co-founder of Pathways and Purpose, alongside his wife, Dr. Susanne Sarley. Pathways of Purpose is an organization dedicated to empowering underserved youth and communities with “asset-based, STEAM educational and vocational programs.”