Office of Career and Professional Development

http://environment.yale.edu/careers

The Office of Career and Professional Development (CPD) seeks to inspire and prepare all students to pursue high-impact environmental careers aligned with their individual abilities, experience, and interests. Its mission is to proactively educate students to maximize their entire YSE experience for impactful careers and lives; cultivate strong relationships with leading domestic and international environmental employers; and support career-related initiatives across YSE.

The CPD's diverse resources, programs, and services enable users to develop key skills needed to present themselves professionally on the job market, develop and refine meaningful career goals, and chart a strategy for conducting effective job and internship searches. We work with students on an ongoing basis through individual advising appointments as well as through workshops conducted by staff and other career development and environmental professionals.

Career and professional development Resources

Career Advising and Peer Advising

Through individual career advising appointments with our professional team, and drop-in hours with trained peer reviewers, students work with CPD on:

  • General career advising (strategy, focus, vision)
  • LinkedIn profile development and reviews
  • Résumé reviews
  • Cover letter reviews
  • CV reviews
  • Personal statement reviews for Ph.D. program and fellowship applications
  • Online tools orientation (YSE Next, LinkedIn, Yale Cross Campus, AlumniFire)
  • Interview skills and preparation coaching
  • Salary negotiation strategies

Workshops and Information Sessions

These programs are designed to guide students through phases of career readiness:

  • Building Your LinkedIn Profile
  • Résumé Workshop with Peer Review
  • Cover Letter Writing and Peer Review
  • Interview Skills Workshop: Behavioral and Traditional Interview Questions
  • Applying for the Ph.D.
  • Job Offer Negotiations

Career Fairs and Regional Events

YSEinDC: Approximately one hundred students attend this annual program based on employers in the Washington, D.C. area. The event has been held both in person and virtually.

All Ivy Environmental and Sustainable Development Career Fair: Up to eighty employers in a range of fields and more than 1,000 students participate in this annual fair jointly sponsored by the eight Ivy League institutions, which is open to all graduate students, undergraduate students, and alumni from partner schools. The fair has been held both virtually and in person at Columbia University in New York.

Professional Skills Modules (PSMs)

All Master of Environmental Management (MEM) students at YSE are required to complete four Professional Skills Modules (PSMs) in order to graduate. Professional Skills Modules provide students with opportunities to strengthen their proficiency in core areas considered essential for all environmental professionals.

Professional Skills Module Sample Topics and Objectives

1. Verbal Communication This workshop is designed to teach students how to give clear and compelling oral presentations. Facilitators introduce participants to best practices and useful frameworks and then give students the chance to practice, providing iterative feedback on individual presentations.
2. Visual Communication of Data Through the Visual Communication workshop, students learn core principles for visually conveying data and other complex information. Students explore different ways to use charts, graphs, tables, infographics, and other methods of creating visual representations of data to engage with different audiences. Using pre-work exercises and interactive group activities, participants emerge ready to communicate better visually.
3. Negotiation This module provides an introduction to general negotiation topics through a variety of exercises. Content includes the concept of negotiation, strategies for preparing to negotiate, positions/interests, best alternatives to negotiated agreements, and more.
4. Cultural Competence The goals of this workshop are to cultivate an understanding of why cultural competence across differences—including those based on experience, expertise, values and other factors—is important and to understand how each of us can work across differences and develop skills for interrupting bias effectively in the workplace.
5. Fundraising This workshop uses a mix of lectures, discussions, and role-plays to demystify the fundraising process and share key approaches for attracting people to invest in your work. Students leave with an understanding of how to develop and steward relationships with funders, how to assess funding landscapes, and how to make funding asks.
6. Project Management Rather than review an existing guide to project management, this workshop explores a number of key questions that practitioners use when tackling and managing environmental challenges. The instructors draw examples and lessons learned from their work across scales, sectors, cultures and continents, as well as from experiences of workshop participants.
7. Stakeholder Engagement This module introduces students to using stakeholder engagement processes, beginning with the conceptual basics: why, how, when, and what form of engagement to use. They then learn the practical steps of how to design, govern, fund, manage, evaluate, and end a successful stakeholder process.
8. Facilitation This session provides an overview of key strategies and best practices to help participants make the most of their time with project partners and colleagues. It focuses on how to design and manage well-run, collaborative meetings to accomplish shared goals.
9. Environmental Career Strategies This interactive workshop guides participants through a series of conversations and exercises designed to help students develop personal career strategies that will assist them in identifying, joining, and participating in environmental professional communities of practice to improve participants' chance of launching and advancing in a high impact career that also meets personal goals and preferences.

Summer Experience Program

A ten- to twelve-week summer experience is required of all master’s candidates at YSE. Summer experiences provide the opportunity to align research and practice, enhance professional and technical skills, and gain professional confidence and experience. Students are assisted by the CPD, faculty, and alumni in locating or designing opportunities that meet their individual needs and interests.

ENV 006, Summer Internship/Research The summer experience is an important opportunity for students to apply knowledge and skills gained during their first year of study, gain professional experience and build networks, and investigate potential career paths. Experiences are ten and twelve weeks in duration, typically in the summer between the first and second years of the program. Students have latitude in designing an experience aligned with individual academic and career goals. Students are responsible for securing or creating their summer experience with appropriate faculty supervision, applying for and securing summer funding, and completing appropriate online forms before and after in order to receive course credit. Required of all master’s candidates. 0 credits.

Yearly outcomes available online at https://careers.environment.yale.edu/resources/summer-experiences-outcome-data.

Immediately Following Graduation 

Each year YSE graduates enjoy employment success in environmental science, policy, and management within the United States and around the world; pursue entrepreneurial ventures; and continue their education with further study. Details including salary information on the most recent as well as previous classes can be found online at https://careers.environment.yale.edu/resources/employment-outcome-data.