Environmental Education - MS

The North American Association for Environmental Educators accredited program provides a unique opportunity, as you will design an environmental education program from the ground up, to be implemented as your culminating experience – Fall in the Field. Based in the cohort model, our program prepares students for a wide range of teaching and leadership positions with nature centers, museums, schools, government agencies, and many others.

Environmental Education is broad and hard to define, but can be found everywhere. It happens as second graders watch monarch butterflies emerge from cocoons in a classroom aquarium. It happens when a family stops to read an interpretive sign about basalt flows encasing a forest of ponderosa pines. It happens when a park ranger leads hikers at Crater Lake down a hill, body sledding in January. The field of Environmental Education has been around for decades, but we are continuing to gain more understanding about its methods and importance.

New research is showing that individuals who feel more connected to the outdoors are more willing to stand up for it. But, what creates this connectedness? Environmental Education hopes to connect students of all ages with their surrounding environment. By teaching about the wonders of the natural world and how humans are connected with it, environmental educators can have an enormous impact on the future of our world.