The Program in Environmental Studies prepares students with knowledge, skills, and ethical sensibilities needed to engage a broad range of local-to-global human-environment relationships.
Environmental studies is rooted in creating a more just, livable, and compassionate world for human and more-than-human flourishing at a time of radical climatic and environmental change. Courses in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities explore the cultural, political, scientific, creative, and ethical aspects of environmental questions. A social justice approach arms students with the knowledge and skills required to address today’s urgent social-ecological issues.
Jeanne Beliveau, Academic Administrative Assistant
7 Andrews Road
Hedge Hall
Phone: 207-786-8204
jbelive2@bates.edu
Our alumni explore diverse career paths ranging from ecologists and environmental lawyers to policymakers and National Park Service rangers. Recent graduates currently work in positions that include energy and green building consulting and land conservation.
of 2020-2024 Bates graduates are employed and/or attending graduate school — settled into their next opportunity within 6 months of graduation.
“Being an environmental studies student at Bates helped me to broaden my thinking about how I approach research in work and in general. … At Bates, I learned to defend my ideas among my peers, receive critical feedback, and adjust what I was doing, all of which were important for my master’s in chemical engineering. ”
— Lois St. Brice ‘07
As an environmental studies major at Bates, you will have access to small class sizes often assembled outside the conventional classroom setting. Environmental studies students can explore Maine’s diverse natural world through the Bates College Shortridge Coastal Center and the 600-acre Bates-Morse Mountain open air classroom, as well as through community-engaged coursework. Faculty research programs offer students the opportunity to take part in research assistantships, and each year, our students present scholarly work at prominent symposiums and regional and national conferences.
The Bates environmental studies department is a close-knit community of science professionals who are deeply engaged in exciting research programs at the intersection of ecological and human relationships. Recent and current projects have included the impacts of climate change on Caribbean coral reefs and Maine’s tidal shore, and community-engaged scholarship with African American communities in the Lower Mississippi River valley. They are widely published in books and such prestigious journals as Climate and Development, Cultural Geographies, and Development and Change.
Each year the graduating class at Bates picks a faculty or staff person to offer the Baccalaureate Address. The Class of 2026 selected Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano.
On Sunday, May 31, 2026, 480 Bates students became Bates alumni, ready to face uncertainty with the support of the lessons they’ve learned at Bates, both in and out of the classroom.
The skies were changeable but the mood was resoundingly upbeat on Sunday, May 31, as 480 members of the Class of 2026 celebrated their Bates graduation surrounded by family and friends, and bolstered by speeches that dwelled on bright promises, both those already delivered and those to come.
