Beyond the Classroom

Careers and Internships

Get credit for your internship or research project!

Have an internship or research project that aligns with your sustainability interests? You can earn academic credit through ESE 401, a course designed to give you credit for hands-on experience. Offered every semester and open to both on-campus and online students, ESE 401 lets you apply what you're learning in the real world.

Learn How to Get Started

Searching for a job or internship?

Looking for internships, jobs, or just trying to figure out what comes next? The resources below are a great place to start. Whether you’re exploring career options, searching for hands-on experience, or connecting with alumni and advisors, these tools can help you build skills, find opportunities, and navigate your path in sustainability and environmental careers.

The Career Center

The Career Center at Illinois is one of the best all-around resources for figuring out your next steps. They offer help with resumes, cover letters, interviews, career exploration, and internship or job searches. You can schedule one-on-one appointments, attend workshops, and access tools that help you understand what kinds of roles might fit your interests and skills. If you’re not sure where to start, this is a very good place to begin.

LAS Career Services

LAS Career Services provides career support specifically for students in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. They understand how LAS majors translate into real-world careers and can help you connect your coursework, skills, and interests to internships, research opportunities, and jobs. In addition to advising appointments, they host career events, employer connections, and workshops tailored to LAS students.

Illinois Handshake

Illinois Handshake is your friend. Create a profile and learn how to use it. You will need a resume, cover letter, materials, and a LinkedIn profile to use Illinois Handshake. The Career Center for directives about putting those together. They also offer help during your internship search.

ESES Alumni LinkedIn Group

Once you have a LinkedIn profile, join our ESES alumni group, which enables current ESES majors and alumni to connect.

By joining this group, alumni have indicated they are interested and available to talk with current students about their work and how they got to where they are.

NRES 108: Environmental Science & Natural Resources Careers

NRES 108 is a 1-credit course designed to help students explore careers in environmental science, sustainability, and natural resources. The class introduces a wide range of career paths through guest speakers, readings, and assignments focused on professional development. Students learn how people working in the field built their careers, what skills are valued, and how to start preparing now for internships, jobs, or graduate school.

Ready to find an internship?

If you're ready to start your search, feel free to check these national sources, state resources, and more!

National Internship & Research Programs

The Student Conservation Association

Student Conservation Association (SCA) offers 3-to-12 month, expense-paid internship opportunities in all 50 states, in more than 50 professional fields with the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and more. The SCA has over 45,000 alumni worldwide, and up to 60% of them become conservation professionals.

Pathways to Science

Pathways to Science lists hundreds of summer research opportunities for undergraduates, all across the country and in all sorts of fields. Choose "Earth, Environmental and Agriculture Sciences" in the pull-down menu for environmental science. There is also a "Social Science" option. Support for participating students varies; almost all cover expenses, and some provide stipends.

Environmental Internship Clearing House

The Environmental Internship Clearinghouse is sponsored by the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE). The NCSE Campus to Careers (C2C) Program is dedicated to providing environmentally motivated students with the tools they need to pursue careers in the non-profit, government, and private sectors.

NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs)

The National Science Foundation funds multiple research sites to develop opportunities for undergraduate research. REUs have been designed to help students discover what a career in research entails. The two REU programs relevant to ESE Majors are Earth Sciences and Social, Behavioral, or Economic Sciences; the latter includes several opportunities to employ GIS. All REUs provide a stipend, and some may cover travel expenses. REUs are almost always over the summer and require travel to the host institution. Application deadlines vary, but many start in the late fall, so check often for updates.

The Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI)

The Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program encourages undergraduate students and recent graduates to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by providing research experiences at Department of Energy laboratories.

State & Local Internships

Our students have also had luck getting internships at these local and state organizations:

Other External Job Boards and Resources

You could also try the following job boards to search for your internship:

Advice from retired professor, Rob Kanter

  1. Tell everyone everywhere what you are doing, and ask them if they have any suggestions for you--i.e., thoughts on people who do similar work you might want to talk to, job openings, organizations that do work you might like (whether or not they are hiring). Who is everyone everywhere? Your parents. Your aunts and uncles. Your parents’ neighbors. Your aunts and uncles’ neighbors. People in line at the store. Current teachers. Former teachers. Current employers. Former employers. You get the picture.
     
  2. Use Dr. Kanter’s Patented Reverse Search® for jobs, internships, and contacts for information interviews. Nothing is more frustrating or worse for the psyche than feeling limited to answering ads while searching for a job or internship. So, get over yourself and get over that feeling. Use the resources available to you to identify people who do jobs you’d like to do at places you’d like to work, make contact with them by phone or email, and interview them!

    LAS Career Services guidance for informational interviews

    Please remember that the world outside the university is far less hierarchical than most students expect, and many professionals are more than happy to talk with curious young people about how they got where they are. (The ones who are not will tell you so, and you lose nothing by asking.)
     
  3. Write the thank you. Every time. Whether or not things went well. Whether or not you liked the person. Whether or not you think you will ever cross paths with them again. Whether or not you write it “late.” Write it and send it.