ECO, founded in 1972 and headquartered in Boston, has regional offices there and in Cleveland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Tampa. Corporations, foundations, and individuals contribute to its multimillion-dollar annual budget. ECO has an "alumni network" numbering over 6,000.
"The development of the environmental profession can be compared with the historical development of other professions," says John R. Cook, Jr., ECO's founder and president. "Right now, I believe the field is going through a maturing phase, just as medicine or law did hundreds of years ago. First, everyone is off doing what works best for [him or her]. Gradually, knowledge and experience grow and are shared; this is specialization and standardization, accreditation, and development of professional ethics and codes of conduct. It is very exciting to be in a profession during this formative period, and it gives individuals the opportunity to have a profound effect on the field for generations to come."
Under Cook's leadership, ECO has become a large, successful organization. Its Environmental Placement Services offers short-term associate positions for college students and recent graduates, as many as 500 per year. They are employed on assignments in federal, state, and local agencies, corporations, and non-profit organizations, working an average of 24 weeks at median salaries ranging from $300 to $700 per week. Cook says that nearly all of the thousands of ECO associates of the past two decades are still working in the environmental field.
The Diversity Initiative strives to increase the presence and numbers of people of colour working in the environmental professions. ECO spends close to $2 million annually to support environmental career development programs for qualified minority students.
ECO has a special program to recruit, train, and place retired engineers and scientists with non-profit community groups reducing industrial toxics. This so-called Technical Advisor Program for Toxics Use Reduction (TAPTUR) is a companion to a service offering the talents of young person qualified to assist communities with environmental re-search and consulting services.
Through Environmental Career Services, ECO supports conferences, workshops, seminars, and individual counselling-all directed towards increasing the supply of trained environmental professionals. The New Complete Guide to Environmental Careers is a 1993 edition of ECO's comprehensive guide, edited by Kevin Doyle and Bill Sharp. Beyond the Green: Redefining and Diversifying the Environmental Movement shows how people of colour are playing a role in environmental management.
Environmental Career Centre
"The Environmental Career Centre (ECC), Hampton Virginia, is a non-profit educational organization established in 1980 and dedicated to helping people helps the environment," says Executive Director John A. Esson. "Our purpose is to lead in environmental career awareness and career development to ensure an adequate supply of trained, dedicated, and confident professionals to solve environmental challenges of the twenty-first century."
ECC's target audiences are students, advisers, recent college graduates, career changers, and persons affected by company downsizing and military base closings.
All segments of the public are reached through a twice-monthly subscription jobs bulletin, Environmental Careers World. The bulletin provides detailed announcements of openings at all experience levels in ecology, biology, forestry, natural resources, environmental education, science/engineering, policy and advocacy, and law-500 or more openings per month.
Colleges and universities engage ECC to conduct environmental career seminars and job fairs. A number of professional organizations, including the American Fisheries Society, Soil & Water Conservation Society, and The Wildlife Society, contract with ECC to conduct career seminars at their annual conferences.
Esson describes "the heart of our services" as career counselling, which he says "has always been free, and which we hope to continue if funding permits."
What ECC calls its Partnership Program is an arrangement with selected "partners," who have completed at least the junior year in college or technical school-though they can have graduate degrees, be midlevel professionals, even job changers or retirees. Partners are assisted in finding paid positions. Finally, in the Minority Achievement Program, interns are doing research on contamination sites in low income and minority neighbourhoods. Sponsors include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), other civilian and military agencies, and corporations.
Educational Resources Information Centre/Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education
The Educational Resources Information Centre (ERIC) system is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. It has developed the world's largest education-related database, containing about 900,000 records such as articles, books, and curriculum and teaching guides. ERIC consists of 16 clearinghouses, one of which is the ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education (CSMEE), funded by the Department of Education and located at The Ohio State University, Columbus.
ERIC/CSMEE's extensive resources are available to teachers or professors at any level, professionals, librarians/information specialists, parents, and the general public. It is said, in the literature, that students "can gain access to the latest information for preparing term papers, theses, and dissertations; obtain information on career development; and build a personalized, low-cost environmental education library."
Professor Joe E. Heimlich suggests that anyone unacquainted with the ERIC system first inquire at a college or university library or major public library for ERIC print indexes, computer access to the ERIC/CS-MEE database, or materials on microfiche. If you have a personal computer with a modem, you can access ERIC information directly or through a commercial service. Internet users can conduct individualized searches. Heimlich, who is an assistant professor of environmental education in the School of Natural Resources at Ohio State, also serves as ERIC/CSMEE's Environmental Education Associate.
Students or teachers might begin by writing ERIC/CSMEE (address at the end of this chapter) and requesting a fact sheet on CSMEE. Ask also for folders on recent publications, resources on the Internet, and articles, called digests, by Heimlich and his colleagues-for example, "Environmental Studies and Environmental Careers." These are all free and will be accompanied by price lists for other, low-cost materials.
