Master's in Environmental Education

$15,000 CEP Fellowship For All Students Admitted for fall 2025

All students admitted to the Bard CEP for fall 2025 enrollment will receive a guaranteed minimum Fellowship of $15,000 for their first year at CEP. More details here.

Environmental Education Master's Overview

The Bard M.Ed. in Environmental Education program prepares educators to create an informed and engaged citizenry supporting progress towards a just, prosperous, and sustainable future. Through intensive academic training, real-world professional experience, and career development opportunities, this environmental education graduate program enables graduates to pursue successful, high-impact careers in private schools, NGOs, government land management agencies, private land conservation organizations, museums, environmental education centers, and consulting firms.

Our M.Ed. Takes You from Classroom to Impact in 9 Months

To mitigate the consequences of climate change, we must engage a rising generation now, which requires more than what typical conservation education offers. We need education for sustainable development, in particular. And we believe environmental education programs need to equip the next generation with the tools they need to deal with critical sustainability challenges—from climate to biodiversity loss, ocean pollution, and air toxics.

Bard's environmental education degree uniquely enables students to begin high-impact work after only nine months of study. Students spend an intensive two semesters at Bard, mastering the tools required to educate the next generation of environmental leaders. In June of the second year, they then spread out across the US and internationally, creating impact through a required, 4-6 month high-level professional Internship followed by an outcome-oriented Capstone Project that typically builds on the internship.

First Year: Academic Training in Natural Science Education

Students pursuing the M.Ed. take a carefully curated program that combines environmental education classes with graduate courses from the MS programs at the Center for Environmental Policy, the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, and elective options from other Bard undergraduate and graduate programs, including the MBA in Sustainability. In addition to a core classroom curriculum, an emphasis on experiential learning takes students outside into the mountains to complete a hands-on January-term intensive course focused on place-based and outdoor education. Throughout, there is a focus on environmental education within the places where students are living, from urban parks, wetlands, and waterways, to rural farmlands and forests.

First-year courses cover several key topics:

Environmental Science of the Natural and Built Environment
Foundations of Environmental Education
Place-Based and Outdoor Education
Curriculum Development
Adolescent Identity, Culture, and Learning

Second Year: High-Impact Career Training

Beginning in June of the second year, students explore their individual career interests through a required 4-6 month, full-time professional internship, and by researching and writing a Capstone Project. Internship sites range from Australia to China, South Africa to Geneva, NYC to DC, and across the US. In the final semester, students complete a Master’s degree capstone project under the direction of a Bard faculty member, while attending capstone seminar classes online. Students gather at Bard for two, one-week residencies during this final term.

The two-year environmental education curriculum ensures that graduates develop broad and deep knowledge of environmental science and education pedagogy; a strong suite of analytical, communication, and problem-solving skills; tools for building education organizations; significant professional experience in their chosen field; and finally, specialized expertise on the particular topic of their research project. In short, Bard's environmental education program is designed to deliver true mastery over the student's area of focus, providing a strong foundation for career success.

Watch the recording from our webinar, Building a Career in Sustainability: Advice From Environmental Education Specialists:

Integrated, Interdisciplinary Curriculum

all of the environmental master's degrees at Bard feature a unique, modular core curriculum where students explore issues like air and atmosphere pollution, biodiversity loss, or ecosystem service provision simultaneously in their science, education, and policy courses. This unique structure creates a powerful dialogue across disciplines, always driving toward solutions. A traditional outdoor education degree cannot deliver this level of interdisciplinary focus across classes, as students typically do not take the same courses together. Bard's core curriculum supports faculty to coordinate closely across classes, allowing the program to complete the delivery of the foundational educational toolkit in nine months. This frees up the second year of study for the professional internship and capstone project.

1:1 Faculty Engagement

Unlike many other environmental education programs, Bard's M.Ed. program offers every student individualized engagement with expert faculty on student research, writing, and communication. Our small class size and dedicated graduate faculty provide students with unmatched access to their professors and mentorship opportunities.

High-level, Extended Professional Internships

All students getting their environmental education master's degree complete a 4-6 month, student-driven, full-time environmental education internship from June to January of the second year in the community (nationally or globally) of their choosing.

The internship is a major item on our graduates' resumes and supports the development of their career networks. Between 30% and 50% of internships turn directly into jobs. The internship typically forms the basis for the student's Master's Capstone Projects.

Bard helps students find internship opportunities with a variety of institutions, and is continuously expanding its list of internship sponsors. The internship allows students to follow their preferred areas of specialization locally, elsewhere in the United States, or abroad. The internship gives students an applied focus to their environmental education master's and an opportunity to learn in a professional setting the job-specific skills they will use upon graduation.

Community Engagement, Place-Based Education, Peace Corps Option

Community Engagement

Throughout their time in the program, M.Ed. students engage with local environmental organizations serving various communities in the Hudson Valley to learn about various forms of environmental education and outreach. Students also meet weekly with regional environmental education leaders to learn how they built their careers in the industry and gain insights into the field.

J-Term Immersive Field Course

In January of the first year, M.Ed. students spend two weeks doing day trips and overnight expeditions into the Taconic Mountains to gain field education experience.

Peace Corps Option

Bard also offers students the opportunity to combine their graduate work with Peace Corps service - click here to learn more.

Individualized Research Opportunities

At Bard, the Capstone Project provides the opportunity for students to develop true mastery in their chosen field of interest. Unlike at more traditional environmental education programs, where a capstone project is derivative of a faculty member's research interest, at Bard, students develop their own capstone topics, often focused on addressing an educational opportunity identified during the student's internship. In these cases, students devote an entire year to practical work in the area in which they are passionate: six months of hands-on experience as an environmental educator or similar, coupled with six months of academic analysis and reflection through their capstone work. This kind of mastery provides a strong foundation for career success. Each Master's Project is carefully mentored by two Bard CEP Faculty members, including a primary and secondary advisor.

Career Focus

Whether you're looking for a role at an environmental center, openings as a K-12 teacher, or simply jobs for people who love the outdoors, any career in environmental education can be distilled into a desire to "change minds" to educate the next generation of sustainability leaders. In a typical year, close to 40% of students that graduate from the Bard M.Ed. program are already employed, primarily as a result of job offers arising from the professional internship. On average, 75-85% of graduates find work in the environmental education sector within six months of graduation.

Career Development

Students are thinking about career outcomes from day one at Bard. While studying the various methods of teaching environmental education, students are also exposed to the work of a wide range of organizations (from local to global), so they can learn about the many career opportunities available in environmental education.

Career development exercises are also intentionally integrated into the environmental education curriculum and include developing the following skills:

Resume and cover letter writing
Conducting informational interviews
Blog and memo writing
Professional networking
Personal branding
The "art of the ask"
Presentations - building decks and giving effective public presentations

To learn about the diverse careers our graduates are pursuing, please review our Alumni Profiles.

Environmental Education Classes & Course Work

Students in our environmental education programs have a carefully curated course list that combines a core of environmental education pedagogy with environmental science and general teacher education through the MAT. Courses emphasize analytical frameworks and basic principles through examples and case studies. Joint class sessions, field trips, guest lectures, and conferences expose students to the critical issues and contemporary practices of environmental education. Throughout, there is a focus on engaging a wide diversity of audiences—especially due to misinformation and myths about climate change—with the core ideas of ecological literacy. The nine-month interdisciplinary curriculum, combined with the internship and the Capstone project in the second year, allow students to specialize in their chosen field of interest and launch a high-impact career where they can change minds.

Course Descriptions View Faculty Members

Environmental Science of Natural and Built Environments (Fall + Spring)

This course uses a systems framework to understand local, regional and global biogeochemical processes as a foundation to assess environmental impacts on social-ecological systems in the Anthropocene. In coordination with the economics, law, and policy courses in the program, this two-semester science sequence teaches students fundamental concepts in scientific assessment, including “Western” and indigenous perspectives, which are then applied to topics such as global nitrogen loading, Indigenous forest management and implications for terrestrial carbon sequestration under climate change, ecological intensification of agriculture, and how material flows analysis underpins the Circular Economy. Case studies are chosen to highlight the intersection between scientific understanding and the institutional inequities that lead to injustices in the distribution of environmental goods and harms, with examples of pathways to solutions.

By the end of the course, students will be equipped to:

Critically assess arguments in the peer-reviewed science literature and synthesize key ideas across a wide range of environmental topics
Understand and engage in discussion of the ways in which race and difference impact an individual’s health and welfare outcomes in the face of environmental harms
Utilize a “systems” framework considering mass and energy balance to assess environmental health, including an understanding of life cycle assessment
Consider alternative perceptions of “science” as a function of culture and tradition and how these may influence environmental management
Confidently translate peer-reviewed science articles into common language to meaningfully interact with non-experts on environmental issues

Environmental Policy I (Fall)

This course analyzes the dynamic and complex relationships among legal, political, cultural and ethical factors that shape the environmental policy process. It grounds this analysis in a historical framework that recognizes the legacies of inequity at the domestic and global scales. Using a case study approach, the course introduces students to the core concepts of environmental policy making and environmental policy cycles that include defining an environmental problem, agenda formation and crafting and implementing policy solutions. In the United States context, At both the Federal and sub-national levels, students analyze a range of factors that shape environmental and climate policies, including the nature of state-federal relations in developing and applying environmental law, the issues of environmental justice in highlighting the often uneven implementation of those laws, as well as understanding the interplay of private and public sector actors, non-governmental organization and social movements. In addition, this course explores the dynamics of international environmental regime development, conflict resolution and trans-boundary networks that influence global environmental decision making.

Learning Outcomes:

Knowledge of core concepts of qualitative policy analysis
Understanding how historical legacies of of injustice shape the current moment in environmental and climate policy
Analyzing social movement formation as a critical tool in environmental and climate politics
Identifying how the interplay of ideas, interests and institutions at the domestic and international levels influence how environmental and climate policy problems are identified, and how and what types of solutions are crafted and implemented

Foundations of Environmental Education (Fall)

Faced with multiple converging “wicked” sustainability challenges, in the upcoming decades it will become increasingly critical to have a citizenry engaged, informed, and intimately familiar with the complex inter-workings and relationships of ecological and social processes. To achieve this, it will be necessary to train a new generation of environmental educators who are proficient in explaining socio-natural entanglements, operating at the intersection of social justice and environmentalism to bring environmental education to historically marginalized populations. This class builds on the rich tradition of environmental and experiential pedagogical theory, synthesizing it with a practical toolkit of sustainable systems’ technologies and practices and culminating in environmental educational curriculum design.

Upon completion, students will:

be well versed in concepts and skills necessary for work in a variety of environmental/sustainability education fields in informal settings
be grounded in environmental education pedagogy, with a focus on place-based and urban environmental education
understand how to develop and implement a lesson plan on an environmental theme in collaboration with a community partner

MAT STEM Lab (Fall)

In this course, Environmental Education students join Bard MAT Math and Science students to explore teaching and learning from various perspectives. Past personal teaching and learning experiences form the basis for thinking about curriculum planning, the Math/Science classroom, and the sources of learning difficulties some students experience. Readings, videos, case studies, and classroom observations provide the context for student-focused study of teaching and learning. Students also study standards, curricula, and curriculum materials, paying particular attention to the experiences of underrepresented groups in Math/Science, and to the sometimes competing demands of state- and national-level tests and established learning standards.