Environmental Studies at Brown University

Applications and Acceptances

Hello! My name is Kevin Carter, and I’m going into my sophomore year at Brown where I’m exploring the Open Curriculum but primarily studying Environmental Studies.  I enjoy playing basketball, listening to music, and reading and writing fiction. My high school GPA was 4.72, and in the midst of the pandemic I opted out of submitting ACT/SAT scores.

When applying to colleges I applied to following schools and majors: 

• Journalism: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
• Journalism & Anthropology: The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
• English: Northwestern, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, U Penn, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wash U, Emory, U Virginia, UNC Chapel Hill, Loyola, University of Memphis, DePaul, and Miami University 

Of these schools, I was accepted to: NCA&T, Loyola, UMemphis, UIUC, DePaul and Brown.

I was matched with a full-ride to Brown, a binding accomplishment that I couldn’t turn down! A better question might be why I applied, to which I would respond: the Open Curriculum, prestige, top undergraduate education with world renowned professors, size, and the social atmosphere!

Environmental Sciences at Brown

Located at the summit of Providence, Rhode Island, Brown University is an Ivy League research institution with world renowned faculty and a robust undergraduate program characterized by its signature Open Curriculum. Founded in 1764, Brown’s campus contains an abundance of history shared with the city of Providence, which offers an exuberant hub of culture, diversity, art, and food. Over time, the Brown experience has developed into something unique, as the college has cultivated a revolutionary approach to education, one that gives the student autonomy over classes, leaving them exempt from general core requirements and GPA and offering them the option of pass-fail. All of this is part of the effort to prioritize learning and encourage academic exploration and innovation at Brown, where the student gets to customize their education. 

The Environmental Studies program at Brown is committed to addressing the myriad of demanding modern-day environmental challenges by composing degrees that give students exposure to an interdisciplinary learning experience that will equip them to solve these convoluted issues, and even, with the Engaged Scholars program, providing hands-on opportunities for students to cooperate with and assist community partners. There are five tracks in the ENVS concentration: Air, Climate, and Energy, Conservation Science and policy, Environment and Inequality, Land, Water, and Food Security, and Sustainability in Development. Regardless of the pathway chosen by a student, concentrating in Environmental studies means they will gain interdisciplinary takeaways from the natural and social sciences and from public policy. They will gain critical skills in research and design analysis and develop a focused area of environmental expertise. Conclusively, they will complete an integrative senior project or capstone course. After obtaining a degree in Environmental Studies, students often further their education in the field or begin careers in consulting, research, public policy, education, data analysis, sustainability, conservation, and more. Needless to say, Environmental Studies at Brown opens up numerous lanes for students to apply what they’ve learned to impact the world.

Admissions, Strengths and Requirements

Considering it isn’t in the top ten intended majors from applicants, Environmental Studies is far from the most popular major. Judging by the amount of degrees typically awarded to ENVS majors each year, the fraction of admitted students intending to major in ENVS is most likely less than 3%. 

Despite these underwhelming statistics, the Environmental Studies program at Brown still has a lot to offer. The Institute at Brown for Environment and Society funds undergraduate opportunities including the Voss Undergraduate Research Fellowships, which is open to rising seniors searching for a summer research experience to set the foundation for their honors thesis. For other undergraduate levels, there is the IBES summer internship program, which is a paid summer internship that allows students to test out career options and engage with environmental studies outside of the classroom. IBES also offers courses during the school year that present students with the chance to accomplish an engaged scholarship goal, whether this be through partnering with local organizations (ENVS 110), planning and developing local urban agriculture projects (ENVS 1555), or attending meetings in D.C. with experts and organizations and holding briefings on joint research (ENVS 1574). As always, the Open Curriculum provides opportunities for students who may want to take courses completely unrelated to ENVS, as long as they fulfill the concentration requirements in time for graduation. The option of S/NC (pass-fail) plays a similar role in giving students the ability to adjust the academic rigor. With one of the best undergraduate programs (ranked #4 by U.S. news) and the world-renowned faculty, academics is an aspect of Brown that is unequivocally exceptional. 

There are two undergraduate degrees provided by the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES): the A.B. Degree in Environmental studies (14-15 courses), and the Sc.B Degree in Environmental Science (19-20 courses). They are differentiated mostly by the amount of courses required, with the Sc.B degree’s extra 4-5 track specific courses demanding a more in-depth study of a field. What they have in common are 4 core requirements (Principles of Economics or History of Capitalism, Environmental Science in a Changing World, Humans, Nature, and the Environment: Addressing Environmental Change in the 21st Century, and Diversity of Life or Earth: Evolution of a Habitable Planet), a research methods course, 3 environmental electives(i.e., any pre-req taken to fulfill a requirement or class in another concentration with environmental content, or just another ENVS course) 1-2 capstone courses, and five track-specific requirements.

My Experience in ENVS at Brown

A class I took in my second semester was ENVS 0490, Environmental Science in a Changing World, taught by Professor Kartzinel. This class was taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 10:30 - 11:50 am. The class was decently sized, taught in a lecture hall that was usually occupied by 30-50 people (although there were many more taking the class, many people utilized the hybrid option). This was probably my most manageable class, considering that assignments were online textbook readings that were mostly very spread out, with generous deadlines. Other assignments may have been quizzes, modules, and short readings, which usually weren’t too difficult. The exams were take-home, closed book, but there was plenty of time provided for completion. Even with this relatively low maintenance schedule, I still learned a lot from the class from the readings and modules as well as from the lectures. The course content included the topics of climate change, population, energy supply, agriculture, biodiversity, and more. It is all taught under the primary lens of modern day climate change issues, and because that’s something that fascinates me I enjoyed the class. 

Outside of class, I actively collect compost for a student-led group called “SCRAP”,  an on-campus initiative to coordinate the excess compost that doesn’t make it to dining hall compost bins, where the majority of campus compost ends up. This requires an individual effort on my part to keep a bin and make sure that I’m composting all of the food that I take out of the dining halls to eat. There is also a group effort involved that occurs every weekend called compost turns, where members of scrap dump their compost into bins and come together to host cycles by turning compost and facilitating the natural process that turns compostable material into nutrient-rich soil.

Job Prospects

Potential jobs for Environmental Studies majors range from consulting, research, public policy, education, data analysis, sustainability, conservation, and engineering. Based upon ENVS major post-graduate and undergraduate endeavors,  students can anticipate finding internship and job opportunities from Open Space Institute, Green Energy Consumers Alliance, Penn Environment, Women's development and environment organization, Brightline defense, Solar Stewards, and Bain & Company. The positions held by ENVS majors at these organizations, in the corresponding order, are Conservation Diversity Fellow, Policy coordinator/energy programs associate, Summer Climate Defender Intern, Project and Communications Associate, Policy Fellow, Fall intern, and Incoming Associate Consultant.

Written by Kevin Carter, PathIvy Brown University Ambassador