Who will Lead Us Out of Climate Crisis? Gender, Race, and Early Career Pathways in Environmental Engineering

Environmental decline is accelerating worldwide, underscoring the need for transformation of the way broader society engages in the climate crisis. Who among engineering students is preparing to enter this problem space and lead change? This study represents a first step in defining the "people space" surrounding the problem space at an early workforce moment: the transition from college to work. Our particular interest is in the gendered and racialized components of this workforce moment. The severity of climate decline is gendered and racialized, as are the factors driving it. In addition, environmental engineering sees among the highest percentage of women among degree-earners relative to other engineering fields, and among the highest percentage of women from underrepresented racial/ethnic minority (URM) backgrounds in engineering, although the number of URM women pursuing environmental engineering degrees is small. Against the backdrop of social and structural inequality, environmental decline, and degree attainment patterns, we consider how diverse groups of women are positioned for leadership in the field. Our research questions are: What are environmental engineering students' graduate school and job intentions during college? What are their graduate school and job destinations 1-3 years post-graduation? How do intentions and destinations vary by students' gender and race/ethnicity? We examine students' career pathways in other majors to contextualize patterns. Data come from the longitudinal, NSF-funded Engineering Majors Survey (EMS). The first wave of EMS (EMS 1.0) was administered at a nationally representative sample of 27 U.S. engineering schools in 2015. A second wave was administered to 1.0 respondents in 2016, and a third wave, in 2017. Our focal baseline sample is composed of 75 1.0 respondents who marked that they were environmental engineering majors, 568 respondents marking civil engineering majors (our "peer" major), and 5,360 respondents majoring in other engineering fields. Our focal longitudinal sample is smaller, requiring more of a "case study" approach among environmental engineering graduates (longitudinal sample size in other fields is sufficient for statistical analysis). Findings show that one-third of environmental engineering majors are leaning towards graduate school while they are juniors or seniors in college. They are significantly less likely to consider pursuing an MBA and more likely to consider pursuing a JD compared with other engineering majors. They are significantly more likely to consider employment in non-profit agencies and less likely to have start-up intentions compared with other majors, although the majority of all engineering students target employment in medium to large business settings within five years of graduating. Among environmental engineering majors, women in aggregate appear to be less interested in corporate jobs than are men, but this is not the case for our small sample of URM women, nearly all of whom were leaning towards corporate employment. On average, women are significantly less likely than men to talk with peers and faculty about professional options, a gender difference not observed in other engineering majors; URM women, however, report more frequent conversations with faculty about professional options, but not with other students. The small number of women in our longitudinal sample who were employed by the third wave of the survey all reported working in business settings in utilities, construction, and waste management/remediation services industries. Our discussion explores how these results might prompt new thinking about undergraduate engineering education and environmental work. We consider how our findings can inform teaching and learning for effective early career practice and future leadership. We propose leadership modules in environmental engineering curricula that focus on not only the urgent environmental problem space, but gender and racial equality in the people space surrounding it.