Stephan Parker came in on Wednesday October 10th to inform
the class of career development within the field of Environmental Engineering.
Parker is a Senior Project Manager at Tetra Tech where he has spent over twenty
years in various environmental contract, research, and consulting capacities,
participating in and leading environmental cleanup programs for commercial
clients, the EPA and various DOD clients. He is well aware of what steps to
take in order to find a successful pathway in this field.
He first starts off the night explaining to us that 10 to20
years from graduation we will not be doing what we first started getting
involved in right after college. This is due to a variety of things including
societal, political and natural resource changes. Demands do not stay constant
in the world. One year the government may focus on recycling, reusing and
reducing, but within a couple of years they want to start a different program;
for example, a program that focuses on electric powered cars. It’s hard to
control the shift of ideas, but that is where Parker tells us that we have to
be flexible.
In his next point he also acknowledged flexibility as a key characteristic.
His point being that when trying to find
a career path, you need to be flexible, able to assess core strengths and
utilize them, determine weaknesses and figure out a way to compensate for them,
keep training throughout your career and of course get certifications.
With a solid approach to a career path in environmental
engineering, there are many different avenues that can be explored. Parker enlightens
us on a variety of choices, explaining in a brief synopsis what each career
entails.
Among the many careers options he stated, here are a few:
Ground Water Treatment
– focuses on spills on the grounds; usually solved with injection of chemicals
in the ground creating a reaction that helps to diffuse the situation.
Ports & Harbors
– Parker noted that this is a big growth area due to an increase in shipping.
There is a constant battle between the need for industry vs. the importance of
natural resources.
Site Investigators –
When property transfers take place the property needs to be checked for any
risks.
Restoration &
Water Management – When a building or structure is built over an existing
habitat/ecosystem there is a law now that requires a restoration or replacement
of the land that was taken away.
Mines & Minerals
– Is a huge growth industry. Anything that is taken up from underground creates
a lot of waste that needs to be dealt with in an eco-friendly and economic
matter.
Marketing &
Business Management – This offers a lot of money to be made, but requires the
willingness to network and build an engineering team that you can sell.
Construction
Management – Anyone that gets involved in the design of infrastructures has
to be able to go to a construction site and make sure the work is getting done
properly.
This was just a short list of the many jobs that Parker stated
that night and an even shorter list of all the possible jobs that are
available. It’s reassuring to look at all the different paths that are
available knowing that we will most likely not be involved with the same
pathway that we first got involved with. It gives us all a chance to breathe
for a bit in this hectic game called life.